Earth Ethics

About the Author

Madeleine Collie is a curator and writer who produces public moments, exhibitions and exchanges. Her recent PhD in Art History and Theory with Monash University explores the social worlds and ethico-political commitments that emerge through relations with plants. She is co-editor of a forthcoming volume to be published by Discipline issuing from the long term research exchange Follow the Plants (2023-25). She initiated the Food Art Research Network (2020-ongoing) and is currently a guest curator at Kin Museum of Contemporary Art, Sweden. She led The Ash Project (2016-2019) a transdisciplinary public art exhibition and public engagement program to memorialise the ash tree, with Kent Downs, Whitstable Biennale, Forest Research and Turner Contemporary. She has recently published with Art Monthly, Un Magazine, Perimeter Editions and Performance Research Journal.

Megan Cope is a Quandamooka artist from Moreton Bay/North Stradbroke Island in South East Queensland. Her site-specific sculptural installations, public artworks and paintings investigate issues relating to colonial histories, the environment and mapping practices. Her work often resists prescribed notions of Aboriginal art, challenges the grand narrative of 'Australia', and challenges our sense of time and ownership in a settler colonial state.These explorations result in various material outcomes.

Kinyingarra Guwinyanba (2022ongoing) is a hand-built sculptural formation and an important living project on Country, for Country in the waters of Quandamooka and is an ongoing collaboration with her community. Kinyingarra Guwinyanba has been featured in ABC TV's Art Works, and "Off Country" iterations have featured in This language that is every stone, Institute of Modern Art, Meanjin/Brisbane; Low Pressure, Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane; and We, On The Rising Wave, Busan Biennale, South Korea (all 2022). Cope is a member of Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. She is represented by Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane.

Charlotte Day is Director of Art Museums at the University of Melbourne, with oversight of Buxton Contemporary and The Potter Museum of Art. Previously Director of Monash University Museum of Art, she has extensive experience in commissioning public artworks and developing art collections, and has held curatorial and directorial roles in public galleries and contemporary art organisations including the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Centre for Contemporary Photography and Gertrude Contemporary (all Melbourne). She was guest curator for the Anne Landa Award (2013), Adelaide Biennial (2010), TarraWarra Biennial (2008) and Australian Pavilion for Venice Biennale (2005 and 2007).

Melissa Ratliff is currently an editor at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Previously Curator Research at Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA, Melbourne, she has held curatorial and public program positions in contemporary art organisations in Australia and overseas, including major exhibitions the Biennale of Sydney (2008, 2010, 2016 and 2018), Manifesta (2013) and documenta (2012). At MUMA, she co-edited the exhibition publications Renee So: Provenance (2023), Tree Story (2021) and Language Is a River (2021), and worked with artists Shelley Lasica and Vivienne Binns on significant monographs. Her writing has been recently published by un Magazine, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art and West Space.