ADELAIDE.- Presented at ACE 11 September to 5 December 2026, Leaves: Eco-Anxiety brings together artists Emiko Artemis, Alycia Bennett, Crista Bradshaw, Jingwei Bu, Bryce Cawte, Stephanie Doddridge, and Trudy Tandberg (1971–2026). The exhibition asks: amidst ecological polycrisis, what practical, cultural or mystical remedies are possible?

Living with ecological crises has become part of everyday life. Climate change, habitat loss and environmental degradation bring with them anxiety and grief about what is happening to the natural world, and uncertainty about what comes next. Leaves: Eco-Anxiety considers not only the anxiety and grief these crises produce, but the possibilities for care, restoration, reflection and collective action.

Bringing together seven artists whose leaf-based artworks respond sympathetically and remedially to these feelings, Leaves: Eco-Anxiety approaches ecological healing from markedly different perspectives. Across the exhibition, caring for Country and restoring native habitat sit alongside contemplation, ritual, divination, drinking tea and noise.

Across the exhibition, Kaurna artist Bryce Cawte creates a yarning circle for conversations about Country, care and planting native species, Wangkumara artist Crista Bradshaw’s real and artist-made eucalyptus leaves will frame and scent the gallery, and Alycia Bennett’s noise performance installation critiques the anxiety-producing effects of portable outdoor maintenance equipment and harnesses the emancipatory possibilities of noise karaoke. Emiko Artemis draws on mystical traditions and rites of penance and absolution in performances that consider responses to eco-anxiety and eco-grief. Jingwei Bu’s temple offers a space for quiet retreat, embodied presence and the care practices involved in tea drinking, while the late Trudy Tandberg’s conceptual work proposes a generational project to remediate the water table around Mount Gambier. Stephanie Doddridge reflects on a year spent working with ecological restoration organisation Bio·R, listening to and restoring native habitat.

ACE Artistic Director Danni Zuvela said the exhibition reflects the emergence of artistic practices responding to the persistent environmental crises shaping contemporary life.





“Living amidst multiple unfolding eco-crises has generated the rise of artistic practices which engage sympathetically and remedially with the natural world. These artistic responses to persistent environmental doom explore, with sensitivity and awareness, channels of environmental recourse and remediation.” says Danni Zuvela.

“The artists in Leaves: Eco-Anxiety use different experimental artistic strategies and materials, but their intentions converge critically around notions of ecological healing.”

Leaves: Eco-Anxiety asks how we might care for the natural world while living with the knowledge of its increasing precarity, and what possibilities for healing, care and remediation might be found along the way.

Emiko Artemis graduated with a PhD in 2012 from the University of Newcastle, NSW. Since then Emiko has continued to explore in their practice themes of human connection, ecology, mysticism and the experience of the body in contemporary life.

Emiko’s practice has been recognised through prizes, residencies and publications and they have participated in national arts gatherings, as well as regularly presenting their research and practice in National and International conferences and seminars.

Emiko lives with disability and works to end discrimination against people with disability and the Rainbow community, of which they are a part of. Emiko works from their home on Ramindjeri Country and their studio space at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, on Kaurna Country, where they present experimental performance.

Emiko has a particular interest in finding ways to center the more than human world in everyday life and seeks to invite the more then human world to collaborate with them in creative pursuits.

Alycia Bennett is a multi-disciplinary artist based on Kaurna Land. Their works span across social practice, relational performance, tapestries, installation, sculpture, video and sound. Bennett’s practice investigates ideas surrounding commodification of bodies, surveillance, public and private space, and re-distribution of class and power. Their practice is informed by ideas of autonomy, self-sustaining communities and non-institutional learning. Bennett has exhibited locally and internationally at Guildhouse ARTWORKS, Art Informal (Philippines), Sister Gallery, Holy Rollers, FELTSpace and more.

AKA; Anoname is an experimental sound and performance artist. They use an arrangement of DAWless analog synthesizers, spoken word, sampling and pedals to create aural and visceral heavy textures; Harsh Noise you can dance to.

Crista Bradshaw is a proud Wangkumara contemporary artist based on Ngadjuri, Peramangk, and Kaurna Country in South Australia. Working across photography, painting, sculpture, installation and moving image, her multidisciplinary practice explores cultural reconnection, memory, archives and the ongoing impacts of colonial dispossession.

Growing up disconnected from her Wangkumara heritage due to the intergenerational impacts of colonisation, Bradshaw's practice is grounded in her ongoing journey of reconnecting with Country, family and culture. Through research-led and place-based methodologies, she investigates the relationships between Indigenous knowledge systems, historical archives and contemporary Australian landscapes, considering how absence, loss and resilience are carried across generations.

Rather than positioning Aboriginal and Western perspectives as separate or opposing, Bradshaw's work examines the spaces where these knowledge systems intersect. Through material experimentation and immersive installation, she reinterprets colonial histories from a First Nations perspective, creating works that invite reflection on cultural continuity, healing and the enduring sovereignty of Aboriginal peoples.

Bradshaw completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (First Class Honours) at the University of South Australia, where she was awarded the University Medal and the Creative Graduate Exhibition Prize. Her work has been recognised through awards and commissions including the Guildhouse Collections Project with the City of Adelaide, and she has exhibited across South Australia in galleries, museums and public spaces.

Jingwei Bu is a Chinese-Australian interdisciplinary artist based in Adelaide whose practice spans installation, sculpture, drawing, moving image, sound, and participatory performance. Having lived and studied across China, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Australia, her work is informed by diverse cultural and philosophical contexts.

Her practice investigates time as collaborator, medium, and material, examining how bodily actions and natural processes are recorded and transformed through material. Originating in intuitive mark-mapping drawings, her methodology has expanded into material-led investigations in which substances such as tea, paper, and aluminium respond to processes of absorption, evaporation, staining, impact, and accumulation. Her work is often realised through immersive, multi-sensory installations and physically demanding, durational performances that position the body as both instrument and site of making.

Bu has presented solo exhibitions at Adelaide Central Gallery, Firstdraft (Sydney), Woollahra Gallery at Redleaf (Sydney), and Redbase Gallery (Sydney). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Sullivan+Strumpf (Melbourne), Bundoora Homestead Art Centre (Melbourne), the South Australian Museum, and Sauerbier House (Adelaide). She has been part of ANAT Spectra 2025 at the University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery.

She has actively performed across Australia at venues including Performance Space (Sydney), Adelaide Festival Centre’s InSPACE Program, ACE (Adelaide Contemporary Experimental), Vitalstatistix’s Adhocracy, Nexus Arts, The Mill, and Melbourne Art Fair.

She is the recipient of the Hospital Research Foundation Emerging Artist Prize, James Martin High Achievement Graduate Award, and Graduate Fellowship from Adelaide Central School of Art. She has undertaken mentorship with Lindy Lee through the Guildhouse Catapult program and participated in residencies with ACE, Nexus Arts and Expand Lab (Adelaide Film Festival × Samstag Museum).

Her experimental writing has been published in Artlink Magazine, and her work is held in private and institutional collections including The Hospital Research Foundation and the Macquarie Collection. Commissioned by Adelaide Contemporary Experimental and Adelaide Film Festival to create new works, Bu secured funding support from both Creative Australia and Creative South Australia.

Bryce Cawte is a 24-year-old Aboriginal artist based in Adelaide on Kaurna Yerta, specialising in traditional woodcarving practices. Bryce's bloodlines connect him to the communities of Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna through matrilineal lines and, through his patrilineal lines, he's connected to Wirangu, Mirning and Kokatha people.

His practice focuses on crafting cultural artefacts and weaponry, drawing inspiration from ancestral techniques while incorporating contemporary methods. Through the use of various tools, burning, and carving patterns, Bryce explores the intersections of heritage and innovation in his creations.

His practice is deeply rooted in cultural preservation and personal expression, reflecting his commitment to sustaining and evolving traditional art forms. As a young father, Cawte's artistic journey is also informed by his role in passing down cultural knowledge to future generations.

Stephanie Doddridge is a contemporary artist living and working on Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri Country, South Australia. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the symbolic relationships between people, plants and places through sculpture, installation, textiles, printmaking, and socially engaged processes. Drawing on ecologies of care, relational environmental practices, and site-responsive research, Doddridge investigates how everyday acts of tending, cultivating, and making can contribute to more reciprocal relationships with the natural world. Working with organic, garden-derived, and experimental materials, she creates works that foreground interdependence, regeneration, and collective responsibility.

Dodridge completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts (First Class Honours) at the University of South Australia in 2022, receiving an Award for Outstanding Achievement. Her work was selected for Hatched: National Graduate Exhibition at Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, in 2021, and in 2023 her solo exhibition On Harvesting Dandelions received the City Rural Emerging Artist Award as part of SALA Festival. In 2024 she undertook the Guildhouse Collections Project with Flinders University Museum of Art and served as Project Curator for the Helpmann Academy 2025 Graduate Exhibition under the mentorship of Anna Zagala. She is currently a Studio Residency recipient at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental.

Trudy Tandberg is an artist and community organiser. Originally from inner city Melbourne, Tandberg relocated to the outskirts of Mount Gambier on the Limestone Coast seven years ago. Since relocating, she has endeavoured to learn firsthand about the region’s ecology, the farming industry, and art therapy for individuals and the community.

Tandberg is an active member of the Limestone Coast artist community. She recently acquired the Suttontown Chapel Studio, constructed in 1867, commencing a major restoration of the chapel. Tandberg is committed to turning it into a working hub to support local artists in the region; transforming the Chapel Workshop Shed into Thumb Print Workshops Inc., where artists develop their skills as printmakers.