Warwick Art Gallery presents a thought-provoking new exhibition by Southern Downs artist and visual arts researcher Peter Osborn, inviting audiences to consider humanity’s place within the immense age of the natural world.

In his latest body of work, Osborn brings together ceramics, sculpture, drawings and works made directly from soil, rock and ash to explore the relationship between the relatively brief human age and the vast geological and evolutionary history of our planet.

Central to the exhibition is the artist’s direct engagement with the natural materials of his local environment. Soils and rocks gathered from the Southern Downs become both the physical substance of the artworks and a means of developing a deeper personal relationship with place.

The exhibition builds on Osborn’s extensive research into environmental art and his PhD in Visual Arts. Osborn’s practice has taken him well beyond his Southern Downs studio, with residencies and projects in inland Australia, on the Eastern Central Coast and internationally in France, Finland, Denmark and Japan.

At a time when humanity’s relationship with power, conflict and the built world can dominate our attention, Osborn’s work offers an opportunity to pause and consider a more fundamental relationship – our dependence upon the natural world.