For Jones, the possibilities inherent in updating this mythical figure are endlessly versatile. Human indifference is evident in the increasing corporatisation and pollution of space and, much closer to home, in the Convent’s 100-year history where many of the children suffered in institutionalised care. For them, it was “a place of hardship and ordeal”, according to the Convent’s website.

Literally and figuratively the landscape is the subject of Jones’ work. “It’s incredibly important to understand the landscape of that particular site is the plants and critters in it. We are not just actors on it. We are part of the natural world.”

Jones uses natural phosphorous to illuminate her astronaut suit. Similarly, fellow commissioned artist Megan Cope uses an earth pigment that glows. Like a ring of tombstones, Cope’s Rematriation is constructed using half-buried Welsh slate, recycled from the Convent roofs. Emblazoned in a single glowing line of cursive script, the six-metre diameter slate work reads in three languages (Woi Wurrung, Welsh and English): “May Bunjil keep you safe on Wurundjeri Country.” “It suggests a return to the Earth Mother,” says the Quandamooka (North Stradbroke Island, Queensland) artist.

The appropriateness of a nocturnal exhibition excites Cope: “There are lots of metaphors, stories and activities in Aboriginal cultures that only happen at night.”

Both Cope and Jones embrace the interspecies component to Alred’s exhibition. “It’s about the idea of connectedness to the earth, to plants, animals, but also other species – bacteria, fungi,” says Alred. “In both instances it’s not us and the environment. We are the environment and environment is us. We are connected. Notions of kinship and custodianship and country that are viewed through the First Nations’ Australia lens are about interconnectedness. The artists present a set of future imaginaries and strategies and a different way to see and be in the world. We question the scientific revolution that seeks to master nature and remake the earth as an object for human use.”

Only in the last few decades have scientists come to appreciate that plants “communicate” with each other through mycelium distributing and exchanging essential nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen as the plant requires. While mycelium allows plants to communicate with each other, artist Dylan Martorell communicates with plants using music. Martorell’s sound-art installation Sonaflora Drift Yarra (2019–22) creates a visual score by mapping the anatomical geometries of plants from the Convent’s Heritage Garden onto a scaled grid of pitches and durations. The plant-based melodies transcribe an interspecies interaction between humans and flora in the Convent’s habitat.

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Ecological disaster looms in Almagul Menlibayeva’s film Transoxiana Dreams. She, too, uses elements of myth to warn against exploitation of the environment, while Zanny Begg’s Stories of Kannagi reimagines a 2000-year-old Sri Lankan story about a young woman forced into exile by the misdeeds of her husband, against a backdrop of colonisation, civil war, asylum seekers and detention.

For all the unleashing of mystical figures and hybrid forms into the night lurking in unfamiliar corners of the Convent’s gothic surrounds, Alred insists it won’t “scare the kiddies”. “Lighting and sound are magic things,” says Alred.

While the exhibition shares the Dark Mofo festival’s lighting designer, there is no intention to make Interspecies a White Night or Dark Mofo style festival. There are no flame towers or klieg lights.

“What we want to achieve is a set of subtly integrated artworks,” Alred says. “There’s intimate and large-scale experiences. It’s thinking about this site as a whole living, breathing entity. Something we can be part of and it is a part of us.”

Interspecies and Other Others is at Abbotsford Convent, Wednesday-Sunday, sunset to 10pm, August 26 - October 2.

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