“Overgrown”
Alrey Batol and Hannah Hallam-Eames
27 July → 27 July 2024

A blurry image of round green Nasturtium leaves
'Overgrown' image courtesy Ronen Jafari.

Overgrown is a day of collective learning centred on the notion that looking after the natural environment constitutes significant cultural work, particularly in the context of climate emergency.

Saturday 27 July, 11am → 2pm

Through their practice most artists have an explicit relationship to materials and their attendant politics. By equating cultural work with ecological work, can we alter the way our industry understands its relationship and responsibility to the natural environment?

How might this challenge the work of artist-run initiatives, collecting institutions and established understandings of conservation?

Overgrown will comprise talks by artists with practices of regeneration, Alrey Batol and Hannah Hallam-Eames, and a composting workshop with Reground, a social enterprise with a focus on creating circular economies through innovative waste collection and minimisation projects.

Program

→ 11am: Welcome

→ 11.15am: Alrey Batol: Appropriate Design

Appropriate Design is about a deeper context of an art practice. It will look into accountability, integrity and what it really means to be ‘regenerative’.

→ 12pm: Hannah Hallam-Eames: Performance lecture

Through microscopic video, automatic diagramming and video footage of the Litli-Hrutur eruption in Iceland, Hannah will explore the metamorphic and volatile nature of the ground, which has been historically associated as a passive backdrop for anthropocentric activity in Western thought.

→ 12.45pm: Lunch provided by West Space and Stefanino Panino

→ 1:15pm: Reground: Composting workshop

→ 2pm: End

This project is supported by City of Yarra through their Climate Action and Environment Grant.

A portrait of a figure sitting in their loungeroom. They are sitting on an armchair with a table infront of them that has assorted objects on it. The figure is wearing a flannel shirt and a woolen beanie
a woman with dark hair and hazel eyes stands in front of her artwork made of metal and marble displayed on a white wall. She is wearing a long dark coat with her hands in her pockets
A large tobacco plant with lucious green leaves sits on a white shelf in front of a white wall. There is a yellow envelope of seeds in front of the pot. On the pot it says "Tobacco plant for a good home".
A lecture slide by Alrey Batol that reads "Appropriate -- Ethical, Regenerative" and "Design -- Complicity, Accountability"
A collection of odd shaped metal castings lay on top of a pile of volcanic rocks

Philippines-born and now based in Naarm/Melbourne, Alrey Batol’s practice involves the politics and accountability of material culture. Inspired by the anarchist philosophy of prefigurative politics and the revival of commons-thinking, recent works are grounded in appropriate technology and DIY ethos, ranging from backyard ceramics and industrial design to paper making and multimedia.

Hannah Hallam-Eames is an artist, bushland regenerator and researcher from Aotearoa, based in Naarm/Melbourne. Her multidisciplinary research is explored through sculptural installation, combining processes and non-human materials. Inspired by field and laboratory methods found within environmental science, Hallam-Eames explores the earth's geology as a dynamic machine which distorts anthropocentric thought, as opposed to grounding it. Through remote hiking, she diagrams, photographs and records volatile terrain such as volcanic eruptions, glaciers, crude-oil well sites, and meteorite impact craters.