Future Pasts considers the impact of colonialism and industrialisation on our countryside and waterways through the creations of contemporary Australian artists. This exhibition is both an elegy for a lost natural world and a call to action. Whether, in the future, we will look back on our time as a past of apathy or action remains to be seen; thus, our future pasts are full of possibility.

Future Pasts brings together artists whose practices engage with eco-feminism, climate consciousness, environmental repair, conservation, and the deep relationality between people and place. Building on Australia’s colonial and industrial history, the artists interrogate a past of environmental destruction, from the gold rush era to the present day. While some works breathe new life into neglected relics, transforming the unwanted into the desirable, others speculate on a tenuous future, pondering the possible salvation or further destruction of the bush.

Each artist reflects on our current era of ecological and historical rupture — an Anthropocene inheritance marked by extraction, disconnection, and profound environmental change — while also imagining new ways of being with land, non-human kin, and the more-than-human world. Through the reconstruction of past human interactions with nature and through the creation of imaginary futures, this exhibition explores themes of natural restoration, resilience, memory, and interdependence, aiming to open a dialogue through which humanity might restore its connection to the natural world, re-centre care, and envision futures shaped by reciprocity rather than depletion.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Sarah Coffey is a sculptor working in Naarm, Melbourne. Sarah works with plant, human-made, earth and animal-made materials that have had a purpose and have been discarded. She wonders about transience and decay, about the effort that goes into these forming of these materials. Using the contrasts between the human and non-human-made materials, she creates new forms that might be the discarded material springing to a new life. Sarah is currently in her final year of the Masters of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Sarah has participated in multiple group shows and held joint shows in Melbourne and Sydney, including Found Wanting at Gallery 550, Richmond in 2022 and at Duck Rabbit, Sydney in 2022. Sarah was awarded the YAVA Small Sculpture Award at the Yering Station Sculpture Exhibition and Awards in 2021 and received a silver medal at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show in 2023 for a commissioned visual display.

Julie Millowick OAM is a photographer from the Castlemaine region. In 1977, a year after graduation from Prahran College, Julie Millowick was included in Australian New Work, curated by and exhibited at the NGV. Julie has subsequently exhibited continuously across documentary, vintage techniques, her personal life and that of her environment. In 1993, with Sally Mann, Nan Goldin and Jacques-Henri Lartigue, her images were exhibited in Intimate Lives, International Fotofeis, Edinburgh. In 2024, Castlemaine Art Museum exhibited Surrounding, a 37-year documentation of the post-goldrush environment surrounding her house. In 2026, Julie was a finalist in the Wyndham Art Prize and the Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize. Collections: NGA, NLA, MAPh, SLV, NGV, Castlemaine Art Museum, Bendigo Art Gallery.

Takako Osawa is a Japanese multidisciplinary artist who works across the body, textiles and lens-based arts. She has been exploring the intersection of her Shinto upbringing (Indigenous Japanese rituals and spiritual practices) and ecological concerns, taking critically endangered Australian animals as metaphors for marginalised minorities, including her own. Her performance photograph, covering herself with hand-collected rubbish, received the Global Awareness Award at the Graduate Student Art Prize at the University of Melbourne in 2024. Her short video depicting her mother’s daily life reflecting Shinto philosophy was selected as a finalist in the emerging artist category at Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize in 2025. Her textile work, Boro Rintoul Creek, and a short video work, For Galaxias, have been selected for the Burrinja Climate Change Biennale #4 in 2026. Takako is currently undertaking a Master of Contemporary Art at the VCA at the University of Melbourne to expand her field of practice.

Justine Roche is a New South Wales-based artist working on Gadigal and Dharrawal land. Her practice explores how photography shapes our understanding of the natural world through the intersection of light, chemistry, materiality and time. She is particularly drawn to the 19th-century wet collodion process of exposing images directly onto glass and aluminium for its haunting, timeless qualities and imperfect traces left by the maker. Through a multifaceted photographic approach, these works investigate landscape as something shaped by perception, memory and imagination, while embracing ambiguity, mysticism and the unseen. Justine completed her Masters of Fine Art in 2022 and her works were purchased by the National Art School for their permanent collection. She has been a finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith Biennial Art Award, Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize and the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize twice.

Tali Steer is an abstract artist based in Victoria’s Alpine region. Her practice is guided by intuition, drawing on movement, gesture and spontaneous mark-making. Inspired by nature and the subconscious, she uses colour as a way to capture emotion and create expressive visual landscapes. Through her work, she explores symbols, rituals and energy, offering a contemporary reflection on how we experience and feel the world around us. Tali is a multi-award-winning artist, having previously received prizes at the King Valley Art Show and the 30×30 Award at Ovens Street Gallery. She has recently exhibited at Brunswick Street Gallery, Sunday Salon, Fenton & Fenton and Beechworth Contemporary. Tali was a finalist in the 2025 Wollongong Art Prize and has been featured in Studio Visit Book 7 and New Art Project Magazine Issue 6.

Renée Sterling is a photographer specialising in low-key, high-contrast monochrome imagery. Working with both the built environment and the natural world, Renée transforms industrial infrastructures and elements of the Australian landscape into moody, atmospheric narratives. Through the use of intentional camera movement (ICM) and a focus on grain and texture, her work strips away the distractions of colour to expose a surreal, timeless realm. Based near Melbourne, Renée’s photographs invite viewers to pause, offering a dark and deeply expressive interpretation of our shared surroundings. Renée has exhibited at the Ballarat International Foto Biennale since 2021, as well as several group shows in Melbourne.

Ed Thomson is a multidisciplinary artist based between Naarm/Melbourne and Colombo, Sri Lanka. She is currently completing a Masters of Contemporary Art at VCA, University of Melbourne. Her practice explores contemporary landscape through embodied drawing, painting and spatial installation. Working across large and small scale surfaces, folded forms and responsive materials, Ed explores memory, movement and site as she uses gesture, layering and chance. Ed’s work engages with a range of landscapes, seeking to capture the feeling and embodied experience of being within them. Her goal is to create atmospheric spaces where body, landscape and material intersect. In 2026, Ed is exhibiting in four group shows – Parallel Projects, Monsalvat and two VCA Artspace exhibitions. In June, she was a resident artist at Venezia Contemporanea during the Venice Biennale, culminating in a solo show, Laguna. In April 2025, she presented Sentinels, a solo exhibition at Barefoot Gallery, Colombo, where she explored significant trees in Sr

Marylou Verberne is a photographic artist based in Victoria’s Central Goldfields on Dja Dja Wurrung Country. Her practice is grounded in repeated encounters with landscape, combining photography with archival research and material experimentation to explore the forces that shape and transform place. Working across photography and mixed media, she is interested in the entanglement of ecological, geological and human histories, and in landscape as an active participant in processes of disturbance, continuity and renewal. Verberne is currently completing a Master of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts and is a graduate of Photography Studies College, Melbourne. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across Melbourne and regional Victoria and has been a finalist in a number of photography and art awards, including Australian Photographer of the Year. In 2026, her work was shortlisted for the Australian Photography Awards, with a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ballarat forthcoming.