Wendy Teakel: ENTANGLEMENT

Opening 3pm Saturday 5 September 2026

Wendy Teakel, Before Rain (detail) 2026, acrylic, charcoal, pastel, gouache, scorch marks on 640gsm Arche paper on birch panel, H 60 X W 60 cm

Wendy Teakel’s Entanglement continues a long engagement with rural life, agricultural landscapes and the rhythms of seasons, weather and the elements. Informed by feminist ecologist and philosopher Donna J. Haraway’s ideas of entanglement, the exhibition considers landscape not as something separate from us, or simply a backdrop to human activity, but as a living network in which humans, animals, plants, soil, climate and the unseen organisms beneath our feet are continually connected.

Teakel often begins with the farm as her point of departure: walking paddocks, observing soil, crops, grasses, fences and seasonal change, and considering how farming practices both shape and are shaped by the land. Her attention moves fluidly across scale, from the complex life of healthy soil to the broad geometry of paddocks and the shifting surfaces of pasture. She imagines rich grasslands as quilts, blankets, tapestries and carpets: protective living surfaces woven through natural processes, human care and time.

Her drawings bring these different scales and viewpoints together. Paddock boundaries, tree lines, grasses and traces of microscopic life overlap and interweave, dissolve and reemerge, creating landscapes that are simultaneously observed and imagined. Rather than presenting a single fixed view, Teakel allows multiple perspectives to coexist, reflecting the complexity, interdependence and reciprocity of living systems.

The materiality of the drawings is central to this process. Traditional media including pastel, graphite, charcoal and coloured pencil are combined with the less conventional processes of scorching and burning the paper with heated pokers for which Teakel is known. Marks are erased, layered, rubbed, washed and weathered, allowing the surface to register both control and chance. Burning introduces fire as an active collaborator, recalling the elemental forces that continually transform rural landscapes.

For Teakel, drawing becomes a way of being within nature rather than looking at it from a distance. The surface of the paper becomes a site where observation, memory, material and process converge. Entanglement reflects on the delicate relationships that sustain cultivated land, acknowledging both its resilience and vulnerability, and the shared responsibilities through which human and more-than-human life shape its future.