MOORE CONTEMPORARY is delighted to return to Sydney for the 2024 edition of Sydney Contemporary at Carriageworks.

The booth presentation under the title 'Nature Reserves', exhibits new works by ERIN COATES, JACOBUS CAPONE and PILAR MATA DUPONT, in collaboration with ERIKA ROUX.

'Nature Reserves' bridges the technical and conceptual frameworks between selected works. In either the subject or the materialisation, the artists draw upon natural ecologies and heightened environmental experiences or concern. Mata Dupont in collaboration with Erika Roux brings a theatrical narrative to the subject while Coates and Capone embed their reverence and statements within the material presence of their work.

Erin Coates presents a new body of sculptures in bronze, silicon, mohair, fox fur, whale tooth and other media; almost as talismans to her family maritime history, the whale bone yard off the coast of Albany and the so-called ghost specimens of extinct species she has researched. Much of her work across film, drawing and objects stems from her interests in marine biology, free-diving and encounters with ecological and human fragilities.

Jacobus Capone presents paintings derived from ritualistic gathering of natural materials such as saltwater, bottlebrush stamens and copper. His paintings are built up with the reserves of nature in a homage to environment and a devotion to practice and time. Capone is known for self-initiated pilgrimages and performances that incorporate durational activity, measures of time or a sense of episodic memorial. His determination to seek connections with place and to pay tribute to human and ecological fragilities instils a tenor in his work that is paradoxically elegiacal and uplifting.

Pilar Mata Dupont shows photography from her newest film project that draws attention to the anomalies and political frustrations at the management and effects of climate change, rising sea-levels, and nitrogen crises in the Dutch polder lands, created from her base in Rotterdam. ‘Lowland Melodies - a Polder Western’, written and co-directed with Erika Roux, has just premiered at Radius in Delft. Mata Dupont often draws upon cinematic tropes to convey perspectives upon current societal issues or to trace the impacts of colonial histories and their aftermath.