Tending the Invasion

Tending the Invasion is a photographic installation by artist Angus Scott, who addresses blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) as a site of ecological, colonial, and personal entanglement. Introduced by imperial botanists, blackberry has since spread beyond control through native environments, becoming vilified within the same systems that once encouraged its presence. Rather than framing the plant as a problem to be solved, this exhibition seeks to approach it as a living presence shaped by histories of ecological imperialism and multi-species relations.

Grounded in revisitation to watercourses across Wurundjeri and Dja Dja Wurrung Country, Angus posits this exhibition with the question of what it means to tend to a place while being implicated in its disturbance. The photographs trace acts of violent-care, depicting conservation and scientific work, while lingering in the reality where protecting one species often requires harming another. Through this, the exhibition explores how ecological tensions are entangled with colonial legacies, and how those legacies continue to inform practices of management, boundary-making, and ideas of belonging.

Acknowledging the complicity of the camera in such dichotomies, the work explores ways of seeing that stay with contradiction and proximity. It opens space for reflection on how we relate to blackberry, and what those relations might reveal about the values and histories shaping ecological thought.