SYDNEY.- Some of the most pressing environmental concerns of our times are explored in a suite of exhibitions on view at UNSW Galleries.

Troubled Waters features the Australian premiere of internationally celebrated British filmmaker John Akomfrah’s landmark Vertigo Sea, Georgia Wallace-Crabbe’s five-screen The Earth and the Elements and a major art/science collaboration titled River Journey, which explores the impact of human activity on Australia’s marine environments.

Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea is a large-scale, immersive video installation exploring our relationship with the ocean.

Fusing archival material, readings from classical sources and newly shot footage, Akomfrah’s critically acclaimed piece focuses on the history and cruelty of the whaling industry and juxtaposes it with scenes of generations of migrants crossing dangerous oceans for a better life.

In River Journey, UNSW Professor Richard Kingsford hopes to inspire a national conversation about the importance of rivers and wetlands. The science-meets-art exhibition is co-curated with Dr Felicity Fenner, Director of UNSW Galleries.

The project combines the latest science with commissions from leading contemporary artists including Andrew Belletty, Nici Cumpston, Tamara Dean, Bonita Ely and Janet Laurence.

“The exhibition follows a river’s journey from source to sea, capturing its vibrancy in photography, video and sound; reflecting its incredible biodiversity; but also illustrating the enormous management challenges and effects of competition for scarce water resources,” says Kingsford, Director of the UNSW Centre for Ecosystem Science. “Through art we bring life to the science of river ecology."

A series of evocative portraits featuring UNSW researchers working in the wild by artist and photographer Tamara Dean accompany the River Journey installation. Selected from Dean’s Wild Researchers series commissioned by UNSW, these uncanny images are shot in the half-light of dawn and dusk, drawing on the tradition of Romantic and still-life painting to reveal the dedication and passion of some of the nation’s leading researchers.

Georgia Wallace-Crabbe’s The Earth and the Elements is an immersive film experience that offers a ‘big picture’ viewpoint of human relationships with the natural environment. It uses the Chinese philosophy of Daoism as a metaphoric frame to explore ecological issues arising from the extraction and flow of mineral resources from Australia to China.

Troubled Waters runs from 19 August – 5 November

Also on exhibition at UNSW Galleries: John Fries Award 2016 (19 August – 1 October)