Review: Earth Canvas looks artistically at alternative farming methods

It is rare that an exhibition has as its stated purpose to save the planet, or at least to point in the direction to achieve this.

Earth Canvas had its origins in a friendly chat between regenerative farmer Gill Sanbrook and environmental artist John Wolseley, in 2019. The working premise is that industrial agriculture with widespread use of chemical fertilisers and heavy use of pesticides, antibiotics in animals and clear-fell logging of native forests is unsustainable. Pollution, soil erosion and the significant contribution to climate change are sounding alarm bells and groups of farmers around Australia are successfully exploring alternative regenerative farming methods, organic foods and sustainable eco-friendly farming methods.

The aim of the Earth Canvas project was to "embed" an artist within a regenerative farm and ask them to respond to the farming methods, farm life and the physical environment that they experienced. The artists involved are Ros Atkins, Jenny Bell, Alexander Boynes, Jo Davenport, Janet Laurence, Tony Nott, Idris Murphy and John Wolseley. All of these artists have a reputation for working with the land and addressing environmental issues in their art and each has responded to the experience of living on a regenerative farm in a different way.

The exhibition, which was curated by Kate Eastick at the Albury Library/Museum, has been touring Australia for two years and now has opened at the National Museum in Canberra. Previously it has been shown at the Swan Hill Regional Gallery, the Riddoch Art and Cultural Centre in Mount Gambier, the Mildura Arts Centre, the Museum of the Riverina in Wagga Wagga and the Tamworth Regional Gallery. It is spectacular, unusual and challenging. Mercifully, none of the work is didactic - we all hate being preached to - and much of it is immersive and contemplative.

The boxed environments of Laurence present small immersive mirrors on the process of mourning for the devastation and for taking joy in the healing of the environment. These dark reflective panels need to be peered into and are not exhibited to advantage in this museum's display where there are too many reflecting surfaces. Atkins has the rare ability to combine the micro and macro visions in the same work. As a printmaker, her wonderful wood engravings, woodcuts and monotypes convey a strong sense of healing, in the sense of healing the land in this farm and, in this instance, healing herself after a period of loss and turmoil in her life.

Davenport's strong expressive paintings and drawings combine the sense of anger, frustration and protest at what is happening to the land and the rivers, but also convey an expression of joy at the process of love and regeneration by the farmers with whom she was involved.

Bell, who comes from a farming background and lives on a farm, translated her transformative experiences on this farm into an abstracted painted code that marks a significant departure from her usual art practice. For several artists, working with regenerative farmers has led to a certain regeneration in their own art practice.

As the Earth Canvas exhibition travelled to its different venues, at each venue a local artist would be involved in the show and was connected to a local regenerative farmer. In Canberra the selected artist was Boynes who was matched with the Watson clan farming at the Millpost farm - a sustainable 1200-hectare property on Ngunnawal/Ngambri country between Queanbeyan and Bungendore.

Boynes created a moving installation (painting plus projection and music by Tristen Parr) about loss and healing. Like many of the artists, he pays respect to the Aboriginal custodians of the land and on a personal level he pays homage to his mother Mandy Martin, with whom he collaborated in many of his previous works and who left this life last year. The photographer, Tony Nott, who also died last year, documented much of the venture and was an artist in his own right and is represented in this exhibition.

Murphy, particularly in his large painting Pink Water with log, presents an evocative sense of place, tinged with the atmosphere of melancholy in his collaboration with his regenerative farmer.

Wolseley - the senior and most distinguished artist in the group - charts the topography of his farm, noting the throbbing regenerative energy. There is something quite magical and transformative about his paintings that invite the viewer to enter them and contemplate the gravity of the situation and yet see the path to salvation.

Earth Canvas may represent what some will see as a minority view in agriculture and horticulture, but, unless it becomes a majority view, the consequences for the environment and the sustainability of our food sources may be quite dire.

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