FREMANTLE and Melville artists are part of an exhibition which delves into the complex relationship people have with each other and the natural world.

Fremantle silversmith and fashion designer Rose Megirian has created small vessels that question the value we placed on products.

Made from silver, they’re created to look hand-made and inexpensive.

“From first sight you can’t tell if they are worth anything,” Megirian says

“They are lumpy archaic forms, some with my thumb prints in them…they look like they are made with play dough.”

• Rose Megirian questions the value we place on objects in her silverware for Radical Ecologies (inset. Photo by Bo Wong)

Air plants

Holding tillandsia (air plants) they also demonstrate the connection between people and nature: “People will form a connection but the plants have to be cared for or they will die.”

Rampant consumerism is also explored in the exhibition, and gallery staff will be sporting clothing Megirian designed herself, made to measure after she got to know each staffer and what would suit them.

“It’s about the personal connection consumers make…they are less likely to dispose of an item if they value it,” she says.

Radical Ecologies features artists at the sharp edge of contemporary practice, including Fremantle’s Perdita Philips.

She buried fragments of more than 850 books in a desert dune, where they were essentially rewritten by termites.

Also from Fremantle, Mike Bianco is an artist, researcher and activist whose recent work centres on interspecies relationships.

During Radical Ecologies visitors will be invited to lie down on a bed holding a living bee hive.

Separate but in close proximity, he invites viewers to immerse themselves in the sounds and smell of the hive for a moment of empathy and intimacy between humans and bees.
With agriculture worldwide threatened by mass bee deaths it’s time to take these important little workers more seriously, Bianco says.

Booragoon’s Noel Nannup and North Perth local Matt Aitken are chalk and cheese, a young artist and a respected Aboriginal elder presenting a collection of audio and video recordings captured during meetings between the pair at sites around Perth.

Leeming artist and writer Steven Finch attempts to build a religion from the ground up, exploring ritual, belonging and group dynamics with The ‘Cene.

Radical Ecologies is on at PICA, James Street, Northbridge July 30 to September 4.

by JENNY D’ANGER