Heidi Axelsen and Hugo Moline: The Visitors

Heidi Axelsen and Hugo Moline continued their quest towards an imagined future through their installation The Visitors, currently on exhibition at Murray Art Museum Albury (MAMA). The Visitors presented an imagined archive of the Plant Agency movement whose mandate called us to place the needs of plants above that of our own. Operating as a form of ‘mobile training camp’ for gallery visitors, the installation comprised a series of devices – objects, artefacts and instructions – encouraging us to be active participants of the movement.

Blue Mountains-based Axelsen (an artist) and Moline (an architect) created sitespecific art, architecture, participatory workshops and reimagined infrastructures that urged us to reconsider our social, political and environmental climate.

Their visions vergedon the dystopian, using gentle (sometimes dark) humour and the absurd to highlight serious issues facing current societal structures and accepted hierarchies. Their use of objects or artefacts made to equip us with the necessary tools required to achieve this alternative future provide credence.

Bringing their project to Albury, Axelsen and Moline engaged a willing group of local high school students as part of a residency workshop run across the Albury Botanic Gardens and MAMA. With consultation with Gardens staff, Axelsen and Moline led a new wave of Plant Agents through the propagation, transportation and re-housing of a medicinal South African species Plectranthus. Participants were charged with devising and creating their own wearable device, physically connecting themselves with their plant subordinate.

Through the design and construction of these devices, students were asked to consider what needs the plant might have, how it would prefer to be situated, transported and in what fashion.

Axelsen and Moline continue the Plant Agency movement, encouraging students to become active participants by acting on the behalf of plants to ensure the future survival of humans.