[vc_single_image image=”32″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”]Following the successful Encountering the Wild Event at Dargan in December 2018, the Wild Mountain Collective is gearing up to support a number of activities. These will support our community in using the creative arts to explore and celebrate the ‘wild’ and our sense of interconnected relationship with nature and one another, and to engage with a philosophy of regenerative living, an attitude of interbeing with all things.

[vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”1056″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”1058″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”1057″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”]Patrons

Darug artist Leanne Tobin has kindly agreed to join eminent environmental philosopher and conservationist Freya Mathews and the nationally renowned landscape artist John Wolseley as a Patron of the Wild Mountain Collective.[vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”1060″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”1061″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”]Seminars

[insert images]Artists Janet Laurence and Louise Fowler-Smith[suggest making both grey scale?]

On Saturday 6 April, 2–4pm, we kick off the Exploring Ideas series with a seminar at the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, Katoomba, titled Celebrating Trees. The seminar features eco-artist Janet Laurence, whose work is currently on show in a major retrospective, After Nature, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. The exhibition, which runs from 1 March to 10 June, includes a new commission, Theatre of Trees.

In Celebrating Trees, Janet is joined by environmental artist Louise Fowler-Smith, founder of the Tree Veneration Society, whose work is inspired by new ways of perceiving the land and ultimately influencing how we live on it.

[vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”1064″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”1063″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”]The Blog

The Wild Mountain Collective blog continues to feature articles about issues of interest to environmental artists and those who share our ethos. Recent posts include:

• The Philosophical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, drawing on the insights of Lynn White
• Why Can’t You Take the Gift We Offer, based on an ABC interview with Wesley Enoch, an Indigenous playwright from Queensland and Director of the Sydney Festival 2019
• Listen to New Zealand’s Whale Whisperers—indigenous Maori insights into the interplay between their ocean ‘ancestors’ and climate change.

These blog posts are also shared to the Wild Mountain Collective Facebook page. The blog also now features a ‘quote of the week’, courtesy of Lorraine Shannon, who is also coordinator of the Talking Ideas seminar series.

If you would like to contribute a short article to the blog, please email it to Barbara Lepani at barbara.lepani@gmail.com[vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”1066″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”1065″ img_size=”full” img_link_large=”Brad Diedrich”]Media

Co-authored by Simon Hearn and Barbara Lepani, the Encountering the Wild exhibition and music event is appearing as a feature article in Oz Art magazine in March 2019. And a short documentary, Encountering the Wild – based on the Dargan event and directed, filmed and edited by Ryan Jasper Walsh – is scheduled for completion by mid-March.

Book Club

The first meeting of the Exploring Ideas Monthly Meet book club on Sunday 17 February, saw Sarah Redshaw leading our exploration of the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his book, Phenomenology of Perception.

This work forms part of the movement in Western philosophy to overcome the culture/nature and mind/matter dualisms of the Western worldview and their influence on our alienation from nature leading to our present existential crisis in ecology and the impact of global warming.

Next month, Barbara Lepani will lead the discussion on David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous. Each month, one member of the club chooses the reading, leads the discussion, and writes up a review for our blog at www.wordpress-483476-4871185.cloudwaysapps.com.