DANDENONG.- Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre presents Primary Succession, a major new immersive exhibition by artists Wona Bae (South Korea) and Charlie Lawler (Australia). In this expansive work, speculative ecologies become a way of navigating the emotional and intellectual complexities of living within a planetary, environmental crisis.

The title Primary Succession borrows from an ecological process through which life slowly emerges after disturbance, such as in glacial retreat or volcanic activity. In these conditions, pioneer species loosen what is fixed, making it possible for other forms of life to follow. Succession, more broadly, describes a landscape adjusting to disruption, drawing on what remains—simple organisms, organic matter, memory—to assemble itself again.

Rather than offering utopian solutions or apocalyptic visions, the work functions as a space of rehearsal, an invitation to test how life might continue and regenerate beyond human dominance. Seeking to re-contextualise humans’ evolving relationship with the natural world, Bae and Lawler interrogate the contradictory logics embedded within social, political and ecological structures. In their future, eco-intelligence (EI) has evolved from artificial intelligence (AI): systems that learn not only from human data, but from the logics of ecosystems themselves.

“Primary Succession is an ambitious and richly layered project that examines the enduring impact of colonisation on our planet’s environment, climate, and living systems,” says Dr Miriam La Rosa, Arts Curator, Greater Dandenong City Council. “Bae and Lawler’s practice brings together scientific and ecological knowledge with a refined aesthetic sensibility, resulting in installations that are not only visually striking but deeply immersive, works that draw audiences into an altered, speculative world.”

In this scenario, the grey-headed flying fox (the bat) becomes a lens of re-orientation. Although frequently misunderstood, bats are essential pollinators and seed dispersers, whose survival is closely tied to ecosystems health and regeneration. By foregrounding their presence, Primary Succession invites audiences to reconsider habitat fragmentation and the possibility of multispecies coexistence.

Projected biomes, such as hotter, drier climates, intensified weather events and altered biodiversity, shape the speculative world of the installation. Life reorganises around nocturnal rhythms, where survival unfolds under the cover of darkness and new ecological strategies emerge. Here, intelligence circulates quietly through residual infrastructures and living networks. Memory, resilience and possibility coexist, not as narratives of recovery, but as an ongoing state of becoming.

“The end is not staged as collapse, but as a subtle reorganisation of matter and time, a reprogramming of life’s logic,” say artists Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler. “New ecologies emerge, at once familiar yet alien, as the vitality of life resurfaces.”

Through immersive scenography and atmospheric design, Primary Succession opens a contemplative space to reflect on survival, regeneration and our shifting role within evolving ecological futures.

Presented by Greater Dandenong City Council.

Curator: Dr Miriam La Rosa