A century ago, the idea of landscape art involved the artist observing nature from the ‘outside’ and recording it on canvas or a sheet of paper with differing degrees of literalness. Sometimes it was with cartographic precision, on other occasions, conveying personal turmoil or romantic dreams.

By the early 20th century, artists increasingly realised they were part of the nature they explored in their art. Mimetic aims quickly gave way to an exploration of a collaboration with nature, recording states of being and the materiality of nature.

The Material Nature exhibition at ANU Drill Hall Gallery brings together the work of eight artists working in Australia who respond to the natural environment in very personal and non-literal ways. The artists selected all have quite a high public profile, but have never been brought together in the same exhibition – until now. They are Ros Auld, Manini Gumana, Jahnne Pasco-White, John Peart, Ana Pollak, Annika Romeyn, Savanhdary Vongpoothorn and Garawan Wanambi.

Although there is little that unites these artists and any of a score of other artists could have taken their place, the overall calibre of the work is high and there are constant visual surprises as you move around the exhibition.

The work of the late John Peart grows in stature with time. A painting such as his Shadowgrille, 2009, possesses a wonderful spatial ambiguity where air seems to circulate among the abstracted shapes with forms breathed onto the canvas suggesting their own space and magic despite the monochromatic restrictions.

Garawan Wanambi, Marraŋu, 2022, etching and natural pigment with synthetic polymer fixative on found aluminium, 122 x 94 cm. Photo: Courtesy the artist and Hugo Michell Gallery, Adelaide.

Garawan Wanambi’s recent paintings perhaps spring the greatest surprise in the exhibition. These includes his Marraŋu, 2022, where working in the tradition of Yolŋu painting he creates a mesmerising work that pulsates with its own sense of energy within the constraints of the clan pattern and restricted palette. I was constantly drawn back to this painting as I walked around the exhibition.

Annika Romeyn, Endurance 14, 2025, watercolour monotype on paper with watercolour editions, 228 x 168 cm. Photo: Courtesy the artist and Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.

Canberra-based artists Annika Romeyn and Savanhdary Vongpoothorn are well known to local art audiences and continue to create images of mood and meditation. This includes Romeyn’s Endurance 14, 2025, with its appeal to the Romantic sublime yet sufficiently abstracted to become a very personalised vision.

Jahnne Pasco-White’s Embodied watery entanglements, Like a Wheel That Turns, 2022, is part of a room-size immersive installation where memory and experience merge as you enter an intimate world that reveals the spiritual journeys of the artist over several decades. It’s presented as a virtuoso piece that demands the viewer pauses and enters into a slow and meditative experience.

Jahnne Pasco-White, Embodied watery entanglements, Like a Wheel That Turns, Macfarlane Commissions, ACCA, 2022, mixed media, installation, dimensions variable. Photo: Courtesy the artist and Station Gallery, Melbourne.

The exhibition presents the triumph of visual intelligence where there are nuanced links established between the pieces on display. It’s accompanied by a lyrically written and well-researched catalogue essay by curator Anne-Marie Jean who introduces the artists, presents her interpretation of their work and creates a context within which we can approach and enter the show.

Deserving more than a footnote is a fascinating satellite exhibition at the Drill Hall, in Gallery 2 – the work of Jacqueline Stojanović titled Units. Working in Melbourne, the artist is of joint Serbian and Vietnamese heritage and ingeniously combines the grid, Serbian folk art and textiles. There’s something authentic and hand-crafted in her work that draws you in to become involved in a labyrinth of intellectual and conceptual games.

Authenticity is an awkward word in the context of contemporary art practice, but it’s appropriate in Stojanović’s work. There appears to be a desire to restore the handmade artefact, revive traditions and the alphabet of folk art, but to do it in such a way as to be conscious of the here and now and not become lost within revivalist fantasies.

Material Nature is open Wednesday-Sunday 10 am to 5 pm at ANU Drill Hall Gallery, Kingsley St, Acton until 10 August 2025. Free admission.