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In 1998, Agnes Denes planted six thousand trees here in Altona, arranged in five spirals. She called it ‘A Forest for Australia’, and she made it as an act of faith in the future.
The forest is still here, one kilometre from where you are standing right now. Although it sits behind a fence line, somewhat inaccessible to the community it was made for, that inaccessibility is also part of what has brought us here together. It is why ‘Dear Agnes,’ exists — for us to say: the forest matters. The vision matters. The questions Agnes Denes was asking in 1998 — about land, time, care, and what we leave behind — are the questions of right now.
In these pages you will encounter twelve artists and collectives who have come to this site with those questions in mind.
Some of them work with sound. Dylan Martorell has filled a field with forty solarpowered kinetic instruments — the sun is the conductor, and the weather improvises. Kate Hunter and Jem Savage have built devices to attune to the sounds of Altona’s soils and waterways — microscopic organisms, phytoplankton, creatures so small they move unnoticed.
Some of the artists work with the ground itself. Nahbananas has made root spheres — once living wood, now painted in charcoal — suspended between sky and earth, honouring what lies beneath. Hot Mulch (Kate Hill and Isadora Vaughan) are thinking about tunnelling, contamination, what seeps through boundaries we imagine are solid. Joanne Mott has embedded Denes’ own words into the landscape, inviting you to walk in circles — offering another way to think about time.
Some of the artists work with the ways this site is recorded, remembered and held.
Rachel Hanlon has placed five wayside shrines across the reserve — Sough, Komorebi, Susurrus, Echo, and Latens/ Witjweri — each marking a stage of contemplation, from listening to offering, becoming over these nine days a living record of who passed through.
Jonathan Sinatra has been moving his camera through the coastal edges of Hobsons Bay — a sensing body, attending to grasses, tidal edges, industrial remnants, and weathered surfaces. Debris Facility Pty Ltd have made four things at once — a sound walk, a fence wrapped in tarpaulin and lilac pipe, a glowing collage that refracts images of this place, and a map you can take with you. It’s contamination as method. Pick up the map.
Angelique Joy has brought three circular fields of speculative flora to the reserve — botanical chimeras that pay homage to the native orchids of Yalukit-willam, some long gone and some that persist. Alexandra Harrison will be in the sunroom of the Under Keepers Cottage — a performance as a gesture of passing through, she says. Witnessing is the mission.
And some of the work sits with the difficulty of the moment. Emma Lyn Winkler has followed Denes’ spiral into the mind’s inner workings — anxiety, obsession, and the humour in the inevitable. Ex Ponto and Lee Ramseyer Bache have transformed the horse stable into something I won’t describe further, except to say: peer through the curtain.
What connects all of them is attention. A decision to look carefully at this place, in all its difficulty and beauty, and to make something in response. If we consider Agnes Denes wrote a correspondence to us 1998, you are about to read the replies.
Welcome to Dear Agnes 2026. ”
Concept illustrations and plans for ‘A Forest for Australia’ (1998)
ABOUT AGNES DENES
A primary figure among the conceptbased artists who emerged in the 1960s and 1970s, Agnes Denes is internationally recognised as a pioneer of ecological and land art.
Often working on a monumental scale and in a wide range of mediums, Denes’ artistic practice is distinctive in terms of its aesthetics and engagement with socio-political ideas. Her work is immersed in science, philosophy, history, and psychology, addressing the challenges of global survival.
Read more about Agnes Denes and her work at agnesdenesstudio.com
ABOUT ‘A FOREST FOR AUSTRALIA’
‘A Forest for Australia’ is a public artwork created in 1998 by one of the world’s leading environmental artists, New York-based Agnes Denes, to sit within the environs of Altona Treatment Plant.
Originally commissioned by Australian artist Richard Thomas for his project ‘The Bridge’, the intention for ‘A Forest for Australia’ was to plant endangered species to create seed supply, however, the combination of soil type and the ravages of drought have seen the forest struggle to flourish.
It is located behind the fence line of Greater Western Water’s Altona Treatment Plant. Proximity to the
treatment facility compromises public access. The intention of the work was to plant a ‘forest’ of 6000 endangered tree species with varying heights at maturity. Planted into five spirals and creating a step pyramid for each spiral when the trees are full-grown, the tree plantation aimed to help alleviate serious land erosion and desertification threatening Australia.
The ‘Dear Agnes’ contemporary public art program pays homage to Agnes Denes by inviting artists to reimagine her work ‘A Forest for Australia’ and its surrounds.
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Lee Ramseyer Bache and Ex Ponto –Pastoral Phantasmagoria, or straight from the horse’s mouth
Debris Facility Pty Ltd –ToxEcology
Rachel Hanlon –Hello Agnes
Alexandra Harrison –A Wave Of Verticals
Kate Hunter and Jem Savage –MicroSonic
Angelique Joy –Flora Field: An invitation…
Dylan Martorell –Sonic Solar Field
Joanne Mott –To Plant a Forest
Hot Mulch (Kate Hill and Isadora Vaughan) –Tunnels, Combustion, Contamination
Jonathan Sinatra –The Setting
Emma Lyn Winkler –Sleight of Hand
Emergency Assembly Point
Exits
Hello Agnes 2026
Artist: Rachel Hanlon
BETWEEN THE SKY AND THE GROUND
Sculpture made from tree roots, 2026
‘Between the Sky and the Ground’ examines the invisible ecosystems that sustain all living organisms. Charcoal painted root spheres echo the earth’s rotation and cycles of loss and renewal.
The work honours the unseen support that lies beneath our feet, inviting us to pause, reflect and consider how we care for the land and all forms of life.
NAHBANANAS
nahbananas
Between the Sky and the Ground
Artist: Nahbananas
PASTORAL PHANTASMAGORIA, OR STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE’S MOUTH
Immersive installation, 2026
‘Pastoral Phantasmagoria, or straight from the horse’s mouth’, is an immersive installation in a horse stable. Audiences peer through a curtain at a projection-mapped horse, an unreliable narrator, whose fractured, multi-voiced storytelling convulses in a fever dream of colonisation, ecological collapse, and the ghosts of the Western District. Darkly comic, grotesque, and unsettling, the work forces spectators to witness grassland decimation, hidden histories, and the immutable persistence of Country.
exponto.com.au lee.rb.net
LEE RAMSEYER BACHE EX PONTO
Pastoral Phantasmagoria, or Straight from the Horse’s Mouth 2026
Artists: Ex Ponto and Lee Ramseyer Bache
TOXECOLOGY
Sound, Installation, Print, 2026
Debris Facility Pty Ltd’s work ‘ToxEcology’ invests in the contamination and containment processes on site and beyond to reflect on control ‘development’ and multiple ecologies. Through four components of the work: design + concrete poetry, installationinfrastructure-packaging, a signal2noise audio tour, and a printed map/ site refraction which lead us through a speculative engagement with these complex sites and their circulatory activities.
debris.facility
DEBRIS FACILITY PTY LTD
RACHEL HANLON
HELLO AGNES
Steel,wood,vintagetelephone,selfinkingstamp,technicalhardware, 2026
‘Hello Agnes’ invites you on a reflective pilgrimage through Truganina Explosives Reserve. Discover five wayside shrines inspired by the contemplative work of Agnes Denes and the experience of artist Rachel Hanlon’s own passage through the site. Each marks a stage of contemplation, from listening to offering. Sough, Komorebi, Susurrus, Echo, and Latens/ Witjweri offer places to pause, stamp your own journey, and leave small offerings, creating a collective archive inspired by ‘A Forest for Australia’.
the_hello_machine rachelhanlon.com
A WAVE OF VERTICALS
Performance lecture, 2026
On Saturdays and Sundays during Dear Agnes, people met in the sunroom of the Under Keepers Cottage for a nomadic installation, a multi-vocal choreography and ongoing encounter between Agnes Denes’ trees, the Public Sphere and the people of Altona.
This is performance as a gesture of passing through. Witnessing is the mission.
ALEXANDRA HARRISON
KATE HUNTER
MICROSONIC
Plywood,paint,muslin,scrim,ceramicandpaperobjects, mp3 on loop, 2026
Concept, creation, assemblage, sound design: Kate Hunter
Creation, fabrication, system: Jem Savage
Voice: Fiona Roake
‘MicroSonic’ invites audiences into an intimate sonic encounter that attunes to the ‘unhearable’ sounds of Altona’s soils and waterways. Featuring three hanging sound boxes, this delicate audiovisual installation combines local field recordings with sculptural forms. Part meditation, part provocation, part invitation, ‘MicroSonic’ asks us to reconsider the act of listening as a practice of care and wonder.
This work was developed in a space managed by the City of Melbourne’s Creative Spaces program.
katehuntertheatre savagemusics
JEM SAVAGE
MicroSonic 2026
Artists: Kate Hunter & Jem Savage
ANGELIQUE JOY
FLORA FIELD: AN INVITATION…
Textile sculpture, 2026
‘Nature is stronger than we are.’ - Agnes Denes
There are incredible, tiny orchids that are native to Yalukit-willam, some long gone and some that persist.
Angelique’s work, ‘Flora Field: An invitation…’ pays homage to Denes’ forest and those that persist with 3 circular fi elds of speculative flora, plants that belong to the land but that have adapted for earthly flourishing… botanical chimeras.
angeliquejoy.creative angeliquejoy.com
Flora Field: An Invitation
Artist: AngeliqueJoy
Found materials, solar panels, motors, 2026
Sonic Solar Field, an installation of 40 solar-powered kinetic musical instruments endeavours to create a deeply resonant response to both the local environment and Agnes Denes’ iconic work ‘A Forest for Australia’ a work where the sun is literally the conductor of a weather based percussive field of sound.
Dylan’s practice, grounded in an interest in ecological systems, nomadic sound cultures, and the interplay between human and nonhuman rhythms, finds fertile ground in this setting, both literally and conceptually.
dylanmartorell dylanmartorell.com
DYLAN MARTORELL
SONIC SOLAR FIELD
JOANNE MOTT
TO PLANT A FOREST
Weathertex, rust paint, 2026
Although located away from Denes’ original work, ‘To Plant a Forest’ is guided by the concept, structure, and intent that underpin it. The artwork offers an intervention grounded in language, time, and place. Composed of Denes’ quotes embedded in the landscape, the installation invites viewers to walk in circular paths, echoing ‘A Forest for Australia’, while reflecting on Denes’ ideas.
joannemott.art joannemott.com
HOT MULCH (KATE HILL AND ISADORA VAUGHAN)
TUNNELS, COMBUSTION, CONTAMINATION
Sculpture, 2026
Hot Mulch has created a siteresponsive temporary sculptural work and a public reading group. These two elements oscillate around the form and action of tunneling as it manifests on and off site in the history of the Explosives Reserve. Doing so draws out combustion, contamination and residues as ways of handling and conceiving the tunnel.
By generating a work that utilises processes reflective of tunneling, burrowing, or trenching, the artists both physically and conceptually explore the complexities of separation and contamination. How does forming differ from tunneling, what is contained or what seeps out? What are the limitations and possibilities of such boundaries? And— how might the movement of materials in turn contaminate other materials, places and entities?
As well as setting up the way we negotiate materials and broader policies and conceptualisations of art, these kinds of questions also inform the premise for our reading group, and how we might think about Agnes Denes’ ‘A Forest for Australia’. By reading texts related to contamination, pollution and colonialism, aloud, in a group, opportunities arise for conversations about how this work functions as both an act of care and extraction.
_katehill_ isadora.vaughan
Tunnels, Combustion, Contamination 2026
Artists: Hot Mulch
SLEIGHT OF HAND
Oil,acrylicandspraypainton canvas, oil on canvas, steel sculpture supports and glazed ceramic sculptures, 2026
‘Sleight of Hand’ is a multimedia installation that fixates on the spiral’s connection to the mind’s inner workings. With psychological associations such as a self-perpetuating cycle of anxiety or the repetition of an obsession, like Denes, ‘Sleight of Hand’ considers an uncertain future by examining our emotional reactions to a looming sense of apocalypse.
emmalynwinkler emmalynwinkler.com
EMMA LYN WINKLER
Sleight of Hand 2026
Artist: EmmaLynWinkler
THE SETTING
Photographyandvideo,2026
‘The Setting’ is a site-responsive moving-image work unfolding across the coastal edges of Hobsons Bay.
Attending closely to textures, rhythms, and traces of place, the camera moves as a sensing body within the landscape. Through subtle framings and temporal shifts, the work offers a contemporary response to Agnes Denes’ vision of land as living memory.
jonathan_sinatra
JONATHAN SINATRA
Truganina
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
With thanks to the following individuals and organisations for their support and contributions:
Hobsons Bay City Council
Tania Blackwell, Caitlin Holden, Kate Robinson, Mena Cassetta, Max Hayward, Andrew Webster, Suzette Rodereda, Neil Williamson, Anita Kazmierczak, Khoi Nguyen, Facilities Team, Conservation Team, Libraries Team
Truganina Explosives Reserve Preservation Society
Hobsons Bay Wetlands Centre
Hobsons Bay Men’s Shed
Technical Support
David Murphy
Photography
Matto Lucas
Graphic Design
Megan Slattery
Public Programs
Jaeden Williams Briggs
Karen Ingram, Louis Joel Arts & Community
Zoe Jones, Hannah Cheevers
Robert Ogden
Supporting Partners
RMIT University – Heather Hesterman, Fiona Hillary
Deakin University – Dr. Katie Lee
Greater Western Water – Joseph Philips, Jodie Hallam
All exhibiting artists and performers
‘Dear Agnes,’ was produced by Hobsons Bay City Council in partnership with Deakin University, RMIT University, and Greater Western Water.
Sonic Solar Field
Artist: Dylan Martorell
“This philosophy that I have, I call my work a visual philosophy, has now become philosophy in the land.
I do these reclamation projects and I work on wildlife preserves and landfills and create forests that go into the future, which are really transcending our time and the benefit future generations.”
Agnes Denes on A Forest for Australia, 1998
