How do we imagine survival? Not mere endurance, but adaptation and thriving.
As planetary pressures mount and the future grows harder to imagine, the University of Melbourne's Science Gallery opens EMERGENCE[Y] this June — a gathering of artists and scientists who refuse to treat survival as someone else's problem. Running through December 2026, the exhibition asks not merely whether humanity will endure, but in what form, and by whose ingenuity. It is a rare institutional gesture: one that takes the question of flourishing seriously enough to build a vertical farm, grow fire-resistant cloth from fungi, and listen to dying coral reefs for answers.
- The exhibition opens June 6 under genuine urgency — ecological collapse, technological acceleration, and social upheaval are not its backdrop but its subject matter.
- Works span a disorienting range: a functioning vertical farm, mushroom-mycelium fire-resistant garments, e-waste video landscapes, Mars rover wind data, and coral reef sound sculptures — each one a provocation dressed as an object.
- Patricia Piccinini's major new commission, born from a year in stem cell research labs, anchors the show with a return to her own foundational work — art in direct dialogue with living science.
- Curator Tilly Boleyn built the exhibition alongside academic experts and young people, resisting the institutional habit of speaking about the future to those who will actually inhabit it.
- The show lands not as a solution but as a reorientation — an argument that imagination itself is a survival tool, and that sitting with hard questions is where viable futures begin.
In June, Science Gallery Melbourne opens EMERGENCE[Y], an exhibition that gathers art and science to ask how humanity might not just survive but genuinely flourish as the planet transforms. It runs through December 2026, and it takes seriously what most of us are too busy or too frightened to sit with.
The works span an unlikely range. A working vertical farm — built by engineering researchers alongside Greenspace — lets visitors watch food grow in the city and harvest it themselves. Australian designer Alia Parker's fire-resistant garments, made from mushroom mycelium composite and recycled cotton waste, hang nearby: speculative-sounding materials that actually work. Beijing-based artist Wang Zhigang's video installation Tuengel immerses visitors in a landscape of humans, animals, and intelligent machines living among obsolete technology. A wind sculpture draws live data from NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars. German artist Marco Barotti contributes an acoustic ecology project exploring how the soundscapes of healthy coral reefs might help restore damaged ones — his sound sculptures now embedded in reefs around the world.
At the centre is a major new work by Patricia Piccinini, who spent a year in residency at Science Gallery Melbourne, including time in stem cell research labs at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. The resulting sculpture marks the 25th anniversary of her landmark early piece Still Life With Stem Cells — an artist returning to her own foundational work, now in conversation with current science and current crisis.
Curated by Tilly Boleyn with input from academic experts and young people, the exhibition resists the institutional habit of talking down to the public about the future. It was made with the people who will live in it.
What holds the disparate pieces together is a single question: how do we imagine survival — not as endurance, but as adaptation and creativity? The vertical farm says we can feed ourselves differently. The mushroom textiles say we can make things from what we've discarded. The coral soundscapes say we can listen to what's dying and use that listening to heal. None of it is naive. The show doesn't promise that art and science will solve ecological collapse. But it does suggest they might help us think differently about what's possible — and come away with something like hope.
In June, the University of Melbourne opens an exhibition that refuses to look away from the hard questions. EMERGENCE[Y], running through December at Science Gallery Melbourne, gathers art and science in one sprawling space to ask how we might survive and even flourish as the planet transforms around us. It's the kind of show that stops you mid-stride—not because it's flashy, but because it takes seriously what most of us are too busy or too frightened to sit with.
The exhibition spans an unlikely range of objects and experiences. There's a working vertical farm, built by researchers from the Faculty of Engineering and IT alongside Greenspace, where visitors can actually see food growing in the middle of the city and harvest it themselves. Nearby, fire-resistant garments hang in careful display—made by Australian designer Alia Parker from mushroom mycelium composite and recycled cotton waste, a material that sounds speculative but works. A video installation called Tuengel, created by Beijing-based artist Wang Zhigang from salvaged electronic waste, drops you into a landscape where humans, animals, and intelligent machines coexist among the ruins of obsolete technology. There's a wind sculpture fed by live data from NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars. And there's sound—an acoustic ecology project by German artist Marco Barotti that explores how the soundscapes of healthy coral reefs might help restore damaged ones, with sound sculptures now embedded in reefs around the world.
At the heart of it all is a major new work by Patricia Piccinini, one of Australia's most significant contemporary artists. She spent a year in residency at Science Gallery Melbourne, including time in the stem cell research labs at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, and the resulting sculpture marks the 25th anniversary of her landmark early piece Still Life With Stem Cells. It's a gesture that matters—the artist returning to her own foundational work, but now in conversation with current science, current crisis, current possibility.
The exhibition was curated by Tilly Boleyn, Science Gallery Melbourne's head curator, working with academic experts and young people. That last detail is worth noting. This isn't a show made by institutions talking down to the public about what the future might hold. It's made with the people who will actually live in that future.
What holds all these disparate pieces together is a single question: how do we imagine survival? Not survival as mere endurance, but as adaptation, as creativity, as the possibility of thriving. The vertical farm says we can feed ourselves differently. The mushroom textiles say we can make things from what we've discarded. The coral soundscapes say we can listen to what's dying and use that listening to heal. The Mars wind data says we're already imagining life beyond this planet. The e-waste installation says we're building futures from the wreckage of our technological past.
None of this is naive. The exhibition doesn't pretend that art and science will solve ecological collapse or technological acceleration or social upheaval. But it does suggest that they might help us think differently about what's possible. It's an invitation to sit with the big questions—the ones about what we're building, what we're leaving behind, what we might become—and to come away, maybe, with something like hope. The show opens June 6 and runs through December 2026.
Citações Notáveis
An invitation to sit with some genuinely big questions and maybe come away with a bit of hope.— Beat Magazine on the exhibition's purpose
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does an art exhibition matter when we're talking about survival? Isn't this just aesthetics?
Because survival isn't just a technical problem. It's a question about what we value, what we imagine, what we're willing to try. Art makes that visible in ways data can't.
But there's actual research here too—vertical farms, stem cell work, acoustic ecology. How do those sit together with the art?
They're not separate. Piccinini spent a year in the stem cell labs. The coral soundscapes are rooted in real acoustic science. The vertical farm is built by engineers. The point is that you can't solve these problems by staying in your discipline. You need the artist asking what's possible and the scientist asking what's true.
The exhibition includes work from artists around the world—Mars data, e-waste from Beijing, coral reefs globally. Why is that important?
Because survival isn't local. The wind on Mars, the electronic waste we export, the coral reefs we're destroying—these are all connected. The exhibition refuses to pretend otherwise. It's saying: this is a planetary conversation.
You mentioned young people were involved in the curation. What does that change?
Everything. These are the people who'll live with the consequences of what we build or don't build. Having them shape what gets shown, what gets asked—that's not tokenism. That's recognizing that survival isn't abstract. It's their future.
So what should someone actually expect when they walk in?
To be surprised. To see things that shouldn't work together but do. To stand in front of a coral soundscape or a mushroom garment and think: oh, we could do it differently. That's the whole point.