Sea Change, Tree Change
Alcaston Gallery
01 May - 1 Jun 2019
Curator - Beverly Knight
Artists - Sally Gabori, Judy Holding, Nonggirrnga Marawili, Ginger Riley, Delvene Cockatoo-Collins, Caleb Hall, Guykuda Mununggurr, Idris Murphy, Artists from Pormpuraaw, Jasmine Targett, Delissa Walker.
Sea Change Tree Change Changing Together
For more than 30 years I have been fortunate to travel to idyllic and remote locations at the invitation of many artists including First Nation artists. From my very first trip to the Central Desert, there has been the effort to learn about and understand the land, fire and protecting the water source; and similarly in Arnhem Land, understanding the importance of the sea, the impact of that many seasons of the year had on life and country, past and present, is a continuous journey. The school of learning about ‘country’ in the Aboriginal way has been a driving force in my life.
The late, great Ginger Riley in Arnhem Land taught me about respect for his country, especially his totemic animals and birds and even talking to crocodiles in the Limmen Bight River.
It is still hard for me to fathom that Sally Gabori lived a life untouched by non-Indigenous people on tiny Bentinck Island (a stone’s throw from Ginger Riley in the Gulf of Carpentaria - as the sea eagle flies across the Gulf) until the year I was born when a climatic catastrophe made it impossible for the Kaiadilt people to continue living there due to the devastation of the fresh water source.
Both artists painted from memory or the mind’s eye images. What you see today in their paintings in this exhibition is how country was not possibly how it is now or will be in the very near future. Riley his Marra Dreamtime view of country and Gabori her unique non-derivative view of sea and land of her birth on Bentinck Island.
Sea Change Tree Change Changing Together is a play on the senior generation often changing lifestyles by moving to the sea or country, however we are now addressing the realisation that this privilege may not be available to their grandchildren and subsequent generations due to climate change, pollution and extinguished sea and land life. We understand Venice may be lost to tourists (and artists) in 80 years due to rise in sea level and pollution but the rubbish especially plastic in our own water sources, killing sea life combined with rising temperatures is having a devastating effect.
“Changing together” as outlined recently by Sir David Attenborough at the 2019 UN Climate Change Summit in Poland was the theme for artists in this exhibition to show their world now and to make a statement to work towards what we can do to improve or change habits regarding climate change, pollution in our waters and taking care of country in Australia.
I thank all the artists and contributing writers for continually inspiring us and joining in the call for action.
by Beverly Knight 2019 Director, Alcaston Gallery
To view the exhibition catalogue in full -
Artist Response
The works presented address that we are a generation struggling to counteract previous generations’ contribution towards accelerating climate change. As a collective we struggle to find the root cause within the human condition that has led to our current relationship to our environment and its impending decline.
If we continue without reform at some point in the future nature may respond by re-appropriating our discarded waste, the bi-product of this union remains unpredictable and unknown within a Super Ecology, in which the man-made and organic have become inextricably bound. Or we can begin to acknowledge that we live in a liminal space where we have the ability to see the past and anticipate the future and respond accordingly.
Glimpsing into possible and predicted futures the works reveal that climate change is a challenge that requires us to become our best selves both individually and collectively as a species to act in the interest of future generations.
by Jasmine Morgan Ryan.
Artworks Presented -
Thirst Knows No Season, 2017.
Glass Crystal, Dichroic Lens
Installation size – L200 W180 H110mm
Glass - L200 W180 H100mm
“It takes 1 million years for 1 glass bottle to break down in landfill. The things we make and consume will outlive us all.”
Thirst Knows No Season, a title borrowed from a 1922 Coke ad, highlights the rise of the consumerist industry, its impact on the environment and the directly linked demise of natural global seasons; heralding the beginning of the anthropocentric era.
It is a familiar picture within the visual vernacular of popular culture that depicts a bottle of Coke sitting chilled in a bucket of ice waiting to quench the consumer’s thirst. Thirst Knows No Season depicts a predicted future parallel to this, a vision in which a discarded decomposing Coke bottle is fused within a bed of quartz crystals. The bottle and crystals are both familiar iconographic elements of the organic and man-made worlds. Here they combine, appearing as though time and some unknown force in nature has taken hold, forming a ‘Super ecology’ in which the natural and artificial have become inextricably bound within one system.
In hindsight consumerism will appear to be a culture so contagious it created an unquenchable thirst that halted natural life cycles, changing the course of nature and its governance over the natural world.
“Coke, the greatest pause on Earth” – Coke 1967.
The Electronic Pomegranate – Telecom Home Phone c1977, 2018.
Glass Crystal, Dichroic Lens
Installation size – L370 W370 H100mm
Glass – L230 W230 H100mm
“The root meaning of the word economy is the art of household management.” – Kate Raworth, Global Economist
Fearful of becoming disconnected, out of touch or left behind has become a global condition that feeds the communication industry’s economy. A relic of a bygone era, the telecom home phone echoes Australia’s unresolved recycling problem. Known as the ‘Electronic Pomegranate’ of household appliances home phones from this era are all skin, no fruit and mighty time consuming to dismantle. As Australia does not have a national recycling scheme for electrical appliances, phones leach toxic chemicals into landfill, poisoning the soil and water of surrounding areas.
The Electronic Pomegranate fills a precarious position discarded in ‘no man’s land’ somewhere on the Earth’s crust as unusable waste that no one will claim. They embody the antithesis of a new economic model that has the potential to balance essential human needs working within planetary boundaries; affording an opportunity to stage a quiet revolution within Australian homes. The Electronic Pomegranate - Telecom Home Phone c1977 reminds us - “in the future nature will respond by re-appropriating our discarded waste, the bi-product of this union remains unpredictable and unknown.”
My Precious, Rare Earth – Samsung Galaxy c2010, 2018.
Glass Crystal, Dichroic Lens
Installation size – L180 W180 H60mm
Glass – L110 W90 H60mm
The allure of a new phone comes from a contagious consumerist culture that has an insatiable appetite. Engineered with inbuilt obsolescence, mobile phones are fabricated from materials that are rare, non-renewable and harmful to both humans and the environment if buried in landfill. The manufacturing process uses valuable energy and emits greenhouse gasses that create toxic by-products. My Precious, Rare Earth – Samsung Galaxy c2010 explores the longevity of the things we manufacture on mass that have an engineered ‘shelf life’ of usability and their eventual re-appropriation by the environment.
Copper
Nickel
Silver
Gold
Palladium
Cobalt
Lithium
Lead
Tin
Zinc
REE (rare earth element)
Gallium
Indium
Iron.
Smoke Signal, 2016.
Print on Silk
L 1000 H 1550mm
Smoke Signal charts global climate changes in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history since 1891 (the beginning of the data).
In Smoke Signal, images that access a shared visual history from the year’s global weather reports have been juxta-positioned against one another. The work creates an allegory, illustrating the impact of temperature rise across the spectrum of environments from the Australian bush to Antarctica’s polar regions. There is a sense that the tip of the iceberg is all that is currently visible as smoke plume billows out from the underbelly of the iceberg, showing the fall out of escalating weather changes.
Smoke signals are one of the oldest forms of long-distance visual communication used to signal danger and gather people to a common area. Smoke Signal highlights that there are dangerous and unknown consequences to the climate crisis that are visible in realms beyond the conceivability of our senses, signalling a mark of change into the Anthropogenic era.
More about the work -
‘Jasmine Morgan Ryan is similarly versed in environmental catastrophe, though her hybrid objects and imagery take their cue from the opposing polarities of cause and effect. Casting aside any tactical melodrama she diligently conjures works that, when fully appraised, quietly suck the air from our lungs. Morgan Ryan achieves more than a mirror to our sins. She implicates contemporary cosmological meltdown within the guise of an “art work”. It is here, by giving form to aesthetic impulses, that the self-described “techno-romanticist” extrapolates our worst fears for the environment through an effect not unlike being hit with a brick wrapped inside a pillow. We are drawn to her Smoke Signal, only to discover that the billowing clouds beneath the iceberg are not just for poetical effect; they were created by Australian bushfires in 2014—the hottest year in recorded history. That the iceberg which sits above like a glittering orb melted in that same year, so creating a powerful visual and conceptual cohesion, does little to relieve the uneasy tension within the work.’
by Simon Gregg, curator Gippsland art gallery, Sale VIC.
Garland Magazine - 16 June 2016, https://garlandmag.com/article/aesthetics-in-a-time-of-emergency/ Accessed Sat 12 Apr 2025.