Art and the Environment: Creative Practice and Ecologies

Art and the Environment: Creative Practice and Ecologies investigates how artists and designers engage with the many interconnected systems in our environments — biological, social, technological, and cultural. This course examines how artists, designers, and contemporary interdisciplinary creative practices respond to the ecological crises of our era by highlighting the interdependencies among humans, nonhumans, and built environments. Since the late twentieth century, artists and designers have critically engaged with systems of urbanisation, environmental degradation, capitalism, and extractivism. Students will explore how ideas of ecology have developed from Western scientific and philosophical traditions, while recognising that First Nations’ worldviews offer transformative ways of conceiving relationships among land, water, air, and all living things. By engaging with key concepts from eco-criticism, deep ecology, and new materialism, the course highlights art as a space for rethinking the ethics and aesthetics of coexistence, including community repair and kinship. Through lectures, readings, activities and discussions, students will analyse how diverse artistic practices create, question, and connect multiple ecologies — imagining new possibilities for living well within a shared and evolving world.