A new immersive exhibition landing in Greater Dandenong this month asks a pretty big question: what comes next?
Primary Succession, a major new exhibition by Wona Bae and Charlie Lawler, opens at Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre in Greater Dandenong on 6 June, taking visitors into a speculative future shaped by ecological disruption, regeneration and a world where humans are no longer calling the shots.
The show is the result of years of research at the intersection of art and science, examining how landscapes been altered by colonisation, urban sprawl and climate pressures. At the beginning of their research in Dandenong, Bae and Lawler also consulted with Bunurong Land Council Aboriginal Corporation and the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (Cranbourne), grounding the work in the specific ecological history of the region.
Primary Succession – Dandenong
- Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre, Dandenong
- 6 June – 15 August
- Wednesday to Saturday, 11am–3pm
- Opening event: 6 June, 6pm — includes a Welcome to Country by Bunurong Elder Uncle Mark Brown, a music performance by Ai Yamamoto, and an in-conversation with the artists and curator
- Register here
Stay up to date with what’s happening in and around Melbourne here.
View this post on Instagram
Inside the gallery, visitors move through sculptural forms, immersive installations, and atmospheric environments built from lighting, sound and experimental materials, including mineral and crystalline elements that slowly shift over the course of the show.
Rather than hitting audiences over the head with doom and gloom, the work leans into regeneration: ecosystems rebuilding, biological and technological systems learning from past damage, and natural processes quietly reasserting themselves.
The grey-headed flying fox threads through the exhibition as a kind of guide. Often misunderstood, these animals are actually critical to ecosystem health. As pollinators and seed dispersers, their survival is deeply tied to the regeneration of entire landscapes. Bae and Lawler frame them as emblems of adaptation and shared survival in an uncertain future.
Alongside the gallery show, a companion public artwork titled Field of Future Ecologies will be installed in Harmony Square in central Dandenong. An illuminated glass cube housing growing crystal formations, the work lets passersby watch slow natural processes play out in real time. As the sun goes down, ultraviolet light transforms the cube, turning it into a shifting field of colour.
Greater Dandenong City Council’s Arts Curator Dr Miriam La Rosa said the exhibition offers a way of thinking about ecological change that moves beyond pure loss. Rather than dwelling solely on what’s gone, Primary Succession frames regeneration as something ongoing, quiet, collective and continuously unfolding.
Primary Succession runs from 6 June to 15 August at Walker Street Gallery and Arts Centre, with the opening event on 6 June at 6pm.
For more information, head here.
This article was made in partnership with Arts in Greater Dandenong.
