Material Matters- Rethinking the DNA of Contemporary Art

Material Matters
On the artists who are rethinking the DNA of contemporary art through biofabrication, upcycling, and regenerative practice

By Joseph Jenkinson

As the climate crisis deepens, the cultural sector has been forced to confront the materials that have long defined artistic production. What happens when the substances once considered inert, archival, and authoritative—oil paint, canvas, resin, bronze—begin to signify ecological violence? In this context, artists are turning away from extraction-based processes and towards forms of making that embrace the living, the ephemeral and the entangled.

A new material language is emerging—one shaped not by permanence, but by decay, regeneration, and symbiosis. Whether cultivated, salvaged or decomposed, these materials are not simply eco-friendly substitutions. They are propositions: that the work of art might be made in dialogue with the earth rather than at its expense.

Natural Histories

The canon of landscape painting—Van Gogh’s gilded fields, Monet’s dappled waters—has long positioned nature as muse. Yet the substances used to render such scenes often belie their reverence. Heavy metals like cadmium and cobalt, common in pigments, contaminate waterways. Oil-based mediums, casting resins, and polymer-based plastics are tethered to petrochemical industries. In textile practices, cotton cultivation alone consumes tens of thousands of litres of water per kilogram, while synthetic fibres shed microplastics with every wash—particles now saturating oceans, air, and human bloodstreams.

If the landscape once provided a setting for aesthetic contemplation, it now emerges as both subject and co-author—a medium in crisis.

Grown, Not Made

Biofabrication—growing materials rather than extracting them—has moved from speculative design into the visual arts. Mycelium, the thread-like root network of fungi, is particularly prominent. It can be coaxed into sculptural forms by cultivating it on organic substrates—resulting in objects that are lightweight, durable and biodegradable. The architectural installation Hy-Fi (2014), designed by David Benjamin of New York-based studio The Living for MoMA PS1, remains a seminal project in this field: a trio of soaring, interwoven cylinders constructed from mycelium bricks grown in just five days.

Bacterial cellulose, a byproduct of fermentation, offers similarly intriguing potential, especially in textile and fashion contexts. Algae-based bioplastics, developed as a petroleum-free alternative, have found favour among artists working at the intersection of sustainability and speculative material futures.

In her Melbourne studio, artist Jessie French experiments with algae-derived sheeting and vessels—translucent, sea-toned surfaces that blur the line between organic process and sculptural form. Her work evokes the quiet politics of ephemerality: nothing lasts, but everything transforms.

Reclamation Poetics

If biofabrication looks forward, upcycling turns back—intervening in the waste cycles of late capitalism. Textile artist Sandra Junele repurposes discarded fibres, recalling the furniture-making techniques of her grandfather. She prioritises durability and biodegradability, crafting works that not only resist obsolescence, but honour their eventual decay. “I use all-natural glues and fibres,” she explains, “so that when the time comes, they can return to the soil.”

Sarah Swift, known for her tactile, topographic textile pieces, sources materials from community donations, thrift stores and fashion-industry deadstock. In a recent interview, she described her turn toward waste as a response to both ecological urgency and institutional neglect. “Art school made me resourceful. It was all scraps and leftovers. Eventually, I stopped seeing it as lack, and started seeing it as opportunity.”

Swift’s compositions—woven from plastic netting, drinking straws, hand-dyed remnants—are more than assemblages. They’re material elegies: to oceans choked by waste, to labour obscured by capital, to the quiet violence of disposability.

Towards Regeneration

Some artists move beyond sustainability—beyond even circularity—into a logic of repair. For Ohio-based artist and activist John Sabraw, this means turning pollution into pigment. In collaboration with environmental engineer Dr. Guy Riefler, Sabraw extracts iron oxide from acid mine drainage in decommissioned coal mines. These pigments, once toxic, now form the basis of vividly rendered works that mimic the flows and cycles of the natural world.

Sabraw’s practice is emblematic of a regenerative approach: not only mitigating damage, but healing the systems that have been wounded. His circular compositions speak to the interconnectedness of all things—geology, industry, water, art.

The Material Imaginary

The artists reshaping contemporary practice through biofabricated, salvaged, and regenerative materials are not simply substituting one medium for another. They are altering the terms of authorship itself. In this mode, the artist is not master, but collaborator: with fungi, with bacteria, with waste, with time.

This shift is perhaps best embodied by platforms like Gallery Les Bois, which champions artists exploring ecologically conscious approaches to making. Their programming foregrounds the sensuous, the material, and the critical—proving that climate-conscious work need not be didactic, and that aesthetics and ethics can coexist without compromise.

In the end, these practices offer more than solutions. They offer a reorientation—towards entanglement, toward slowness, toward care. They remind us that to make differently is also to imagine differently: a world in which materials are not inert, but alive.