Jan Cleveringa – Disrupted Dialogues

Jan Cleveringa, Sway, Acrylic polymer,

oil, leaves,

painting/

assemblage on

wood

, 91.5 x 183.4 cm

$5500

Jan Cleveringa

Disrupted Dialogues

6 August - 27 August 2026

Art Atrium 48 is proud to present Jan Cleveringa's latest exhibition, Disrupted Dialogues. Cleveringa is a conceptual multidisciplinary artist whose practice interrogates the intersections of human culture, sustainability, and the environment. Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and mixed media, he combines traditional and experimental techniques with recycled and found materials, producing works that reflect on our shifting relationship with the natural world in a zeitgeist dominated by climate change and technological acceleration.

At the heart of the exhibition is Cleveringa's ongoing series Listening to Trees, in which the artist treats the environment not as a passive subject, but as an active collaborator. Recycled paints drip from repurposed saline bags suspended from the branches of a Hub Tree, marking canvas or paper below in kinetic gestures, patterns, and fractal-like traces that form a language of their own. Cleveringa later returns to intervene, disrupting and reorganising these original marks into new compositions — a durational, dialogic process that unfolds as both process art and performance.

This back-and-forth encounter between the environment and artist serves as a metaphor for the human condition — our drive for order and meaning, our impact on the natural world as well as our ongoing struggle to find harmony within a system we both inhabit and disrupt. The resulting works stand as artefacts of that exchange, inviting viewers to move beyond passive viewing and to consider their own place within this larger, unfolding conversation, and in doing so, encourage a more mindful and sustainable way of living.

Exhibition Opening

Exhibition Opening to be launched by:
Rhonda Davis
Senior Curator at Macquarie University Art Gallery

Thursday 6 August 2026
6:00 - 8:00 pm

Artist Statement

Artist Statement

Jan Cleveringa is a conceptual multidisciplinary artist whose practice examines the complex intersections between human culture, sustainability, and the environment. Working across painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and mixed media, he frequently combines traditional techniques and experimental ideas with recycled and found materials to create works that reflect sustainability and our shifting relationship with the natural world in our contemporary age of climate change and technology.

At the core of his practice is the ongoing series "Listening to Trees". In these works, Cleveringa engages in a collaborative visual dialogue with the environment itself. The environment is an actor, co-artist, and collaborator. They work together and assist each other. They become a team in a certain, targeted making-space with interconnected history, culture, and traits within contemporary societal culture and philosophy.

Both artists (or dynamically several in the interconnected environmental actors) contribute to create an initial plein-air landscape action painting which is entrenched in art tradition and intention.

Together, recycled discarded paints drip from recycled empty saline bags hung from swaying branches of a Hub Tree (or Mother Tree- part of the Wood Wide Web) onto wood canvas or paper at an intended site like a National Park. They then paint and produce kinetic mark-making gestures and patterns and, perhaps, mathematical fractals tied to the grid or matrix behind our nature and reality as artworks. Thus, they inscribe themselves in a seemingly unknown language on the canvas, communicating onto surfaces and materials with physical gestures. A language of sorts. However, once the day's meditations and actions are over and the materials have dried, the process changes but continues over time. The artist then, later, responds by intervening, disrupting, and reorganising the original gesture, or the types of communications, fractal patterns, and mark-makings, into new compositions. This back-and-forth process (also as Process art and performance) serves as a metaphor for the human condition and our profound impact on changing the environment to suit ourselves, climate change, our mindfulness, our desire for order and meaning, and our ongoing struggle to find harmony within a system we are both part of and disrupt. Hence, the totality of the original communication between them is disrupted and an artifact as evidence of the experience is left.

The Listening to Trees series invites viewers to move beyond passive observation and consider their own role in this larger conversation, encouraging a more mindful and sustainable way of living.

Listening to Trees

The “Listening to Trees” series is an exploration of the interconnectedness between humanity and the natural world. Through the lens of sustainability, the series is a collaborative visual dialogue, where the environment speaks in mark-making patterns and gestures to us, and later the artist responds by disrupting the gestural conversation and reorganizing these natural forms into a new order. This process is a metaphor for the human condition, disrupting the environment, reflecting our impact on the natural world and our attempts to find harmony and order within it.

It invites us to engage not just as observers but as mindful participants, thinking ahead, in a larger conversation recognising our egocentric place in the world. It is a call to action to live more mindfully and sustainably.

–  Jan Cleveringa

About the Artist

Jan Cleveringa (b. 1969, Sydney) is a conceptual, multidisciplinary artist exploring the impact of global cultural change in society and in particular about how we relate to our contemporary society, sustainability and environment. He makes several unique bodies of artwork including painting, drawing, installation, sculpture and often experiments while using both traditional and recycled materials and mediums. His "Listening to Trees" artworks are a major series over the last several years.

Cleveringa graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree (1992) majoring in Psychology and Political Science at the University of Sydney, Australia. He also studied Painting in a Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree (1992-95) at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney. He has a Master’s Degree in Management from the University of Technology, Sydney.

In 2021 he won the Lake Light Sculpture Prize, Jindabyne, NSW, Australia; the 2019 Eden Unearthed Art Prize, Eden Gardens NSW, Australia; and the 2019 Scenic Sculpture Environment Prize, Scenic World, Blue Mountains NSW, Australia. In 2016 Cleveringa was awarded the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre Creative Arts Fund Grant for new experimental work in painting. Cleveringa has also been awarded several community and public art project commissions and artist residencies.

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