ART + CLIMATE = CHANGE

By Guy Abrahams, Kelly Gellatly and Bronwyn Johnson

In a period of profound environmental and social upheaval, climate change has become one of our greatest challenges. Yet for many of us, fear, confusion and frustration mean we are reluctant to consider, let alone act on this pressing issue.

Rational engagement with science is vital to forming solutions to this challenge. But a cultural shift is also needed. Artists have the capacity to develop a narrative that recognises the reality of our present and inspires a vibrant, positive vision of our future.

Presenting the work of Australian and international artists across twenty-nine exhibitions and events, ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE explores the power of art to create the empathy, emotional engagement and cultural understanding needed to motivate meaningful change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing Ltd
• Release date: Jun 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9780522869576

Book preview

Edited by Guy Abrahams, Bronwyn Johnson and Kelly Gellatly

MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY PRESS

An imprint of Melbourne University Publishing Limited

11–15 Argyle Place South, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia

[e-mail]

www.mup.com.au

First published 2016

Text © CLIMARTE, Ian Potter Museum of Art and individual authors, 2016

Images © individual artists, 2016

Design and typography © Melbourne University Publishing Limited, 2016

This book is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means or process whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publishers.

Every attempt has been made to locate the copyright holders for material quoted in this book. Any person or organisation that may have been overlooked or misattributed may contact the publisher.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this book may contain names and images of people who have died.

Cover design by Pfisterer+Freeman

Typeset by Megan Ellis

Endpapers photo by Guy Abrahams

Printed in China by 1010 Printing International Limited

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Art+Climate=Change/edited by Guy Abrahams, Bronwyn Johnson and Kelly Gellatly.

9780522869569 (hardback)

Environment (Art)–Victoria—Melbourne—Exhibitions. Environment (Aesthetics)–Exhibitions. Artists–(Art)–Victoria–Melbourne–Exhibitions. Art, Australian–21st century–Exhibitions.

Creative thinking.

Abrahams, Guy, editor. Johnson, Bronwyn, editor. Gellatly, Kelly, editor.

709.9451074.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Guy Abrahams

Museums and the Public Good

Kelly Gellatly

Art in a Harsh Climate: Pathways to a Just and Resilient Post-carbon Culture

John Wiseman

Nature/Revelation

Amy Balkin: Public Smog

David Buckland: Discounting the Future

Debbie Symons and Jasmine Targett: The Catchments Project

In Debt: Saving Seeds; Grassy Woodlands

Rosemary Laing: Weathering

Hannah Bertram: Global Dust Project

John Mawurndjul and Gulumbu Yunupingu: Earth and Sky

Phase Change: Systems Design for a Warming World

Altered Vistas

Japanese Art after Fukushima: Return of Godzilla

Perceptive Power

Megan Keating: The Paper Canary; David Stephenson and Martin Walch: The Derwent Project

Marjolijn Dijkman: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

Søren Dahlgaard: The Maldives Exodus Caravan Show

Angelina Pwerle: Time and Space

Chris Jordan: Intolerable Beauty: Facing the Mirror of Mass Consumption

Earth Matters: Contemporary Photographers in the Landscape

Charmaine Pike and Sue Lovegrove: Landforms and Lagoons; Martin King: Forest of Dreams

The Significant Other

The Warming, AnthropSLAM and Anthropocene Cabinet of Curiosities

Debbie Symons and Jasmine Targett: The Politics of Perception

Tomorrow Never Dies

Baby It’s Hot Outside!

List of Exhibitions and Events

Acknowledgements

Index

FOREWORD

We are at a turning point now. A decisive hour when a historical event occurs, when a decision must be made, when we have understood that the consequences of the past need us to intentionally and decisively redefine the future …

We will look back at this moment as a moment of remarkable transformation, as the indisputable turning point of this century. Let us open our eyes now and see it as it happens.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change¹

Our world is going through a period of profound sociological, environmental and geological transformation. Many of these changes are rooted in cultural practices, beliefs and values that are bound up with our relationships with each other, with other species, and with the ecological and physical systems of the planet we inhabit. Many of these changes are occurring at a pace that is unprecedented, both on human and geological time scales. And many of these changes are occurring as a direct result of human activities.

The chemistry of the atmosphere, oceans and soils has been altered by billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, released through the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—and other processes. These altered conditions are causing profound changes in our climate system: changes that are predicted to escalate as humanity traverses this century, changes that could result in the global average temperature increasing by 4°C or more.²

Into this arena steps the artist. Throughout history artists have played a major role in recording and reflecting the state of society and the natural world within which society exists. Sometimes art is a record of the past. Sometimes art is a catalyst for cultural change.

Today, many people have turned off from discussions around climate change. Fear, confusion, political partisanship, feelings of exclusion, frustration and sheer exhaustion mean we are reluctant to consider and act on this pressing issue. Art, on the other hand, can provide an intellectually free and non-threatening space in which ideas, problems and solutions can be considered, and where personal responses, reflections and discussions are welcome. Art can also create the empathy, emotional engagement, and cultural understanding needed to bridge the gap between climate science and effective climate policy.

ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE was devised and produced by CLIMARTE’s Guy Abrahams and Bronwyn Johnson. The festival brought together a critical mass of exhibitions, talks and related events that catalysed and influenced cultural conversations around climate change. In gathering people from diverse backgrounds, whether at galleries and museums, outdoor installations, or the festival’s many public programs, the inaugural ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE festival gave audiences an opportunity to consider climate change issues from their own perspective and in their own time, by experiencing the creative explorations and collaborations of artists and curators.

Leading scientists, policy experts and researchers from our Principal Knowledge Partner, The University of Melbourne, gave valuable advice and were actively engaged in our public programs and exhibitions. In particular, the university’s Ian Potter Museum of Art and Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, played a key role in developing the festival program.

ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 included twenty-five exhibitions and forty-five public programs including keynote presentations by leading international climate culture pioneers David Buckland, Artistic Director of the UK-based Cape Farewell,³ and William L Fox, Director of the Center for Art + Environment at the Nevada Museum of Art,⁴ as well as the forum ‘Who Speaks For the Earth? - Energy, Politics and Art’.⁵

The festival was attended by over 75,000 people, named by the Huffington Post as one of 2015’s top ten global climate change events, and received the prestigious Melbourne Award for its Contribution to Environmental Sustainability.

To motivate meaningful change we need to bridge the gap between data and action. We need an equation that combines emotional intelligence with empirical measurement to bring about cultural transformation: ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 harnessed the creative capacity of art to raise awareness and engage people in both local and global efforts to tackle climate change.

With this publication we seek not only to record the achievements of ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015, but also to provide inspiration and encouragement for the many future cultural projects we still need to help create a just and sustainable future.

Guy Abrahams, Co-founder and CEO, CLIMARTE

1Christiana Figueres, ‘Paris Climate Summit: ‘The World Is Ready for Change’, 30 October 2015, www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/30/paris-climate-summit-the-world-is-ready-for-change (accessed 1 December 2015).

2IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report , Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014, IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland.

3David Buckland, ‘Climate is Culture: the Cape Farewell Project’, 5 May 2015, http://artclimatechange.org/keynote-lectures/ (accessed 1 December 2015).

4William L Fox, ‘The Art of the Anthropocene’, 6 May 2015, http://artclimatechange.org/keynote-lectures/ (accessed 1 December 2015).

5‘Who Speaks for the Earth: Energy, Politics and Art’, 7 May 2015, http://artclimatechange.org/keynote-lectures/ (accessed 1 December 2015).

David Buckland, Another World Is Possible, Ice Texts, 2010, digitally printed photograph, 116 × 79.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

MUSEUMS AND THE PUBLIC GOOD

Do we need to defend both the place and relevance of an issues-based festival in museums and galleries? And does this very question signal how infrequently we see ‘political’ or agenda-fuelled content in the twenty-first-century museum?

On balance, museums and galleries within Australia, while happy to support the artist to use the museum as a platform to espouse their own ideas around gender, sexuality, ethnicity, the environment, or local and global politics, seem rather unwilling to initiate or present these agendas themselves, remaining instead within the known, accepted and uncontroversial frameworks of the thematic survey or retrospective exhibition. Perhaps one of the most subtle and interesting things about ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE—and we can potentially determine this from a glance at the list of organisations that participated—is the manner in which its very clear purpose serves as a provocation to the art museum itself, challenging those of us who work within them to interrogate the expectations we have (or parameters we place) around the work we show and the way we communicate with our audiences, while similarly highlighting the seeming rarity of art exhibitions in which a particular stand or point of view is made, owned and clearly expressed. So, ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE presents a number of important questions around curatorial practice back to its constituents: those employed in the visual arts as curators, programmers and producers. Why are we afraid, for example, to engage in and encourage debate within our work of exhibition-making and to effectively, and bravely, put our heads above the parapet when needed? Importantly, the ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE festival has given those involved the opportunity to speak collectively about the most pressing issue facing twenty-first-century society: to voice concerns, provide alternative ways for looking at and addressing current issues, and to make a contribution that both anticipates and encourages unexpected outcomes and new