Launching Fragile Futures: When Preservation Becomes a Paradox

Right now, my work is sitting under glass domes at Foster Gallery as part of Vitamin Sea, a joint exhibition with Jacqui Christians. On the surface, the work looks delicate. Jellyfish. Marine forms. Objects that feel almost like museum specimens.

But that sense of preservation is exactly where the discomfort begins.

For years, my practice has lived in the space between beauty and unease. I’ve always been drawn to natural history, to the way we collect, categorise, and display the natural world as if that act alone could save it. Butterflies in frames. Bones turned into objects. Memory held still.

Fragile Futures grows directly from that place — but it asks harder questions.

Vitamin Sea Exhibition - Stockyard Gallery, Foster

Oh Jellyfish: Consumerism Meets Conservation

The first body of work in Fragile Futures is Oh Jellyfish.

These pieces reimagine several jellyfish species found in Victorian coastal waters, shown in their adult medusa phase. Each form is created using advanced resin techniques and 3D printing, then encased beneath a glass dome — a deliberate reference to natural history museums and preservation practices.

The jellyfish are beautiful. They glow. They float. They feel almost timeless.

And yet, they are made from ABS-like resin — a plastic material closely related to the same mass-produced consumer plastics polluting our oceans and threatening marine life.

This is the Anthropocene conservation paradox.

To preserve these creatures in art, I am using the very materials contributing to their decline.

That contradiction is not accidental. It is the work.

Why I’m Using Plastic to Talk About Plastic

I don’t believe environmental art should pretend it exists outside the systems it critiques.

3D printing, resin casting, and rapid prototyping are powerful creative tools — but they are also deeply wasteful. Around 30% of PLA, ABS, and resin materials used in these processes end up discarded. Failed prints. Supports. Offcuts. Test pieces.

Fragile Futures is my response to that reality.

Over the next 12–18 months, this project will evolve into a larger, installation-based exhibition that uses both printed forms and their waste. Discarded materials are not hidden — they are transformed into visible, intentional artefacts that ask viewers to consider the environmental cost of innovation.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about awareness.

If artists are going to use new technologies, we also need to take responsibility for their impact.

From Studio Practice to Public Conversation

My studio sits in the South Gippsland hills near Wonthaggi, not far from the coast that inspires much of this work. Living close to these environments makes it impossible to ignore what’s changing — what’s disappearing, and what we’re choosing not to see.

Fragile Futures is not a single exhibition. It’s an ongoing inquiry.

It brings together:

• Marine-inspired sculptural forms
• Reclaimed and waste materials from 3D printing
• Traditional handcraft alongside contemporary processes
• Collaboration with industry partners willing to look critically at their own waste

The goal is simple: to make the invisible visible, and to invite reflection rather than instruction.

Moving Forward

If you’ve followed my work through curiosities, oddities, and preserved forms, this project isn’t a departure — it’s a continuation.

The materials may have changed.
The questions have sharpened.
But the core remains the same.

What do we value enough to preserve?
And what are we willing to sacrifice to do it?

Vitamin Sea is currently showing at Foster Gallery, and Fragile Futures will continue to unfold through exhibitions, studio work, and writing here on the blog.

This is just the beginning.

Dina Goebel - Vitamin Sea Exhibition - Stockyard Gallery, Foster