Natural Disasters / Disasters Unnatural

About the exhibition
Natural Disasters/Disasters Unnatural was an exhibition of paintings, drawings and installations by thirteen artists, which explored the theme of the disastrous and the traumatic in natural and personal environments. The exhibition covered a selection of work from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries incorporating such themes as bushfires, earthquakes, storms, drought and global warming.

Evidence of the impact of a widespread natural disaster may be seen in the work of colonial artist William Strutt, whose two related studies Race for Life, Black Thursday and Sketch for "Black Thursday, February 1851" acted as a starting point for the exhibition. The destruction wrought by bushfires was a predominant theme in Natural Disasters/Disasters Unnatural, as exemplified by a splendid group of paintings by Fred Williams that record his immediate experience of the tragic 1968 fires in the Dandenong Ranges. Williams' vivid and dramatic representation of fire-ravaged landscape in Burnt Landscape was countered by the aftermath of regrowth in Regenerating Ferns I and Regenerating Ferns II.

Other works by contemporary artists concentrated on general climatic issues, including the degradation of the environment through global warming, the greenhouse effect, and the destruction of animal species. For example, the three filled metal trays by Richard Thomas, Carbon Cycle II, comment on the impact of the production and consumption of carbon-based materials on the environment, leading to the destruction of the Earth's ozone layer. Vera Mailer's knitted 'greenhouse' also considers this global problem, countering it with her childhood recollection of the glasshouse as a place for nurturing and growth.

The exhibition featured installations by Susan Norrie, Leigh Hobba and Rosemary Laing. Laing's installation Natural Disasters aimed to de-romanticise the traditional mythologising of disasters, while Leigh Hobba's evocation of his own experience of an ice storm in Montreal contrasted with Norrie's dark five-part installation linking psychological disorder to the disruption of landscape by earthquake.

MUMA Online Exhibition Archive
MUMA’s online archive is expanding. We welcome your feedback and input. Please contact muma.communications@monash.edu with any information that could help enrich the archive for future audiences.

^{Image: Susan Norrie, Part 1 of Natural Disasters 1995, cibachrome photograph, 171 x 142 cm. Monash University Collection, Melbourne. Purchased 1995}