Material Matters: Creating in Times of Peril

This panel explores the ethical dimensions of materiality in an era defined by ecological crisis, social inequality, and late-capitalist excess. Bringing together artists, designers, and academics, we will examine how the materials we choose—and the systems that produce them—reflect our values and shape our world. At this critical historical juncture, we ask: What does it mean to make responsibly? How do our creative practices contribute to or challenge harmful structures? Together we’ll reflect on the social, environmental, and political implications of our material choices and consider how we might imagine more just and sustainable forms of making.

Presenters

CHAIR
Associate Professor Drew Pettifer

Drew Pettifer is International Lead in the School of Art and convenes RMIT's LGBTIQA+ Research Impact Network, leading the Creative Practice research theme. A contemporary artist, writer, curator, and non-practicing lawyer, his research interests include the archive, queer theory, biopower, desire, gender, representation, and contemporary social politics. His creative practice works across photography, video, print, textiles, performance, and installation. More recently his practice has operated at the nexus of creative practice, critical theory, and social justice, aiming to transform our understanding of Australian history by using art to foreground critical queer histories which have been systematically excluded from dominant archives.

PANEL

Professor Mikala Dwyer

In works that explore how we relate to the object-world, Mikala Dwyer has pushed the limits of sculpture, painting and performance, establishing herself as one of Australia's most important contemporary artists. She has been honoured with solo survey exhibitions at Sydney's two major art museums, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, and the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane.

Dr Nirma Madhoo Chips

Based at the School of Fashion & Textiles RMIT, Nirma Madhoo (she/her) is a filmmaker and extended reality (XR) creator. Her research situated at the intersection of fashion and digital media investigates bodies as performative matter and posthuman performativity in virtual and augmented realities. Nirma's recent fashion XR projects have exhibited internationally on platforms such as SIGGRAPH Asia, ISEA, SXSW, Ars Electronica and New Images. Lensed from an intersectional feminist worldview, these works take shape as embodied encounters in new realities and plug into the affective qualities of immersive media to emerge as decolonial praxis.

Dr Kate Scardifield

Kate Scadifield is a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Material Ecologies Design Lab at the University of Technology Sydney. She has a research driven and experimental studio practice traversing textiles, sculpture, installation and video. Her work intertwines material investigations with archival and collection focused research, and her practice is driven by interdisciplinary exchanges that trace materials through various states of transformation, generating different types of encounters with materials and different forms of material knowledge. Her current projects are investigating algae-based biopolymers, designing with biomaterials for carbon capture and storage, and working with textiles as propositional instruments for navigation, transmission and communication.

Cover image courtesy of Mikala Dwyer, The Divisions and Subtractions.