In her exhibition Tools for Quiet Activism, artist Stephanie Doddridge shifts her focus from domestic gardens to the field, spending time working on ecological restoration projects with grass-roots organisation Bio.R. Stephanie examines how tools, materials and field-based witnessing can come together to inspire hope for ecologically focused futures.

Working with Bio.R, Stephanie discovered a place of site-based adaptations: gardening, tending and remediating with gentle care. Small, repeated acts on degraded land became a kind of ‘quiet activism', rejecting extractive ways of interacting with nature and supporting mutual care between humans and the environment.

Stephanie reflected on this gentle resistance by imagining and then fabricating a suite of compostable tools from experimental materials. Native plants and seeds were integrated into bioplastics so that these tools cannot just return to the earth, but usher in new life. The tools are propositions. Makeshift and adaptable, they offer audiences a toolkit for practice, inviting them to participate small-scale, collective acts of care. Stephanie’s gentle tools, remind us that ecological futures are cultivated through sustained, relational practices; quietly, collectively, and over time.

Stephanie Doddridge is a finalist in the City of Adelaide Award for work in this exhibition.