MATERIAL ECOLOGIES
Shifting Tracks (left) & Crossing Canopy (centre) 2026
Pencil, watercolour on Arches 300gsm cotton rag paper 66 x 101.5cm
Soft Terrain,(right) 2025, Acrylic on Faux Fur 62 x 93cm
Installation View: Left side sculpture & wall work by Sarah Coffey
Installation View: Left - Right: Edwina Thomson, Kate Gabb, Meg Sears, Sarah Coffey
Installation View: Sarah Coffey
Installation View: Kate Gabb
Installation View: Meg Sears
Parallel Projects
Footscray
March-April 2026
Sarah Coffey
Kate Gabb
Meg Sears
Edwina Thomson
Material Ecologies brings together four contemporary female artists whose practices explore the intimate relationship between material, place and the act of making. The exhibition considers how matter—whether synthetic or found—embodies traces of site, gesture and memory.
Working with reclaimed matter, discarded garments, glass, textiles, synthetic fur, materials gathered from natural and urban landscape- the artists treat these substances as responsive agents rather than neutral mediums. Each carries its own history of touch and transformation, revealing how process and place intersect through acts of collection, repair, layering and reconfiguration.
These works emerge from encounters with specific sites—urban, domestic or natural—where material becomes a language for mapping presence and connection. Material Ecologies invites viewers to consider how meaning is formed through tactile engagement: how the act of making binds body to surface and surface to place, transforming the gallery into a field of material conversations and quiet resonances.
All Material Ecologies photography by
Narelle Wilson