Our fourth journal isssue: “Art and Herabrium” - now live.

Check it out here: “Art and Herbarium”

Guest editors: Tom Bristow, Jan Brueggemeier and Danielle Wyatt

Contributors: Anna Artaker, Erica Boito, Bibi Calderaro and Margaretha Haughwout (Coastal Reading Group), Danielle Clode, Bonny Cassidy, Katerie Gladdys and Anna Prizzia and Melissa Desa, Laura Eliaseh, Amanda Johnson, Emma Lansdowne, Emma Robertson, Josh Wodak

Herbaria and natural history archives must be more than repositories for artifacts and scientific information. Curators of these collections are aware that while the archives have always been invested with human passions, natural collections are now laden with distinctly contemporary affect as "nature" comes under threat from global challenges like species extinction, habitat loss and the impacts of man-made climate change. While natural collections institutions aim to improve our ecological futures through scientific research, it is clear that ecological literacy also requires involving diverse publics in more embodied, empathetic and ethical relationships with the natural systems that sustain our life on this planet. As vivid communicators, artists are agents for shaping a ‘pedagogy of feeling’ for the archive, building new kinds of relationships with natural collections and the multi-species worlds they index -- which leads well beyond the walls of any natural collection archive.

Accompanying exhibition project

Exhibition venue: Lab-14, Melbourne

Exhibition Dates: 2nd-16th March 2017

Exhibition curator: Jan Hendrik Brueggemeier

Exhibition artists: Bonny Cassidy, Tom Bristow and Elizabeth Hickey, Harry Nankin, Rosalind Hall, Jessica Hood, Josh Wodak