A Fermentation Plot

My work for All That is Alive is titled A Fermentation Plot. It begins with a selection of ginger plants, cultivated in small bags within the UTS gallery. Over the three months of the exhibition, the plants will be kept alive through the care of the curatorial team. They will water them every two days, open the gallery doors, and wheel the three dollies carrying the bags into the courtyard, allowing the plants to warm themselves in the sun and benefit from local growing conditions.

Once the plants have matured I will collect them from Sydney and, with permission from the Victorian Department of Agriculture, transport them to the gallery in Bendigo. On Djarra Country, they will continue to thrive in the sun and heat until their harvest in February. At this point, the plants will be processed into a ferment, kept alive, slowly transforming in the gallery for the three months of the exhibition there.

The simple conceptual gesture is that the ginger plants connect the metabolisms of two exhibitions. The careful labours of the curatorial staff in Sydney become offerings to the “bio-metaphysical intelligences” of the gallery’s metabolism in Bendigo, through sustained, relational acts of care.

The gallery write “A Fermentation Plot invites reflection on the gallery as a site of cultivation and care. Ginger—a plant without fixed origins—has crossed continents for millennia, carried in clothing, planted in new soils and woven into diverse culinary and medicinal traditions. At UTS Gallery, it grows in modular felt bags, sustained by light, water, and staff attention. In early 2026, the plants will be harvested and fermented in Djaara/Bendigo. La Trobe Art Institute audiences will be invited to add to and consume its ferments. Historically rooted in communal life, fermentation fosters shared microbiomes. Here, it becomes a metaphor for the museum as a place where life is sustained and enriched, asking a question at the exhibition’s core: can museums sustain life?

Collie’s work highlights the essential, often invisible role of gallery staff in caring for artworks. Through this, Collie draws attention to the interdependencies—ecological, institutional, and social—that shape our world, gesturing toward more just and reciprocal futures.”

Supported by Creative Australia through their international residency partnership with Helsinki International Artist Program (HIAP)