ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2017

Jeannie Baker Circle 2016Providing a platform for the discussion of the challenges, opportunities, impacts, and solutions associated with climate change, CLIMARTE’s highly anticipated festival, ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE has now launched running from 19 April – 14 May 2017 across venues in Melbourne and regional Victoria.

Five exhibits have opened a little sooner than the official festival dates, offering festival-goers an early taste of what’s to come later in April.

TarraWarra Museum of Art in Healesville is currently hosting Yhonnie Scarce’s Hollowing Earth – a new work examines the issues related to the mining of uranium on Aboriginal land. Scarce was born in Woomera, South Australia, and she belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. She is one of the first contemporary Australian artists to explore the political and aesthetic power of glass, describing her work as “politically motivated and emotionally driven.”

Over 250 of Ted Barraclough’s hand-carved Native Australian birds are currently exhibited at Chapter House Lane’s exhibition space in Melbourne’s CBD for the exhibition Birdman. Wrens, honeyeaters, magpies to the critically endangered Swift Parrot will take over the laneway windows, and offer the opportunity to critically reflect on the role of birdlife in the environment around us.

In her installation Habitus at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Rebecca Mayo reflects on the history of the Heide site to create imagery for a series of cloth sandbags. Printed with dyes made from indigenous and introduced plants gathered locally by the artist, they are stacked to form a wall in the exhibition space, symbolising the crisis point of climate change and highlighting the cumulative impact of everyday and habitual activities.

Monash Gallery of Art presents Wesley Stacey: the wild thing – a living legend of environmental photography. In the 1970s he dropped out of city life and set up camp in the wilderness of the NSW south coast. Living close to the land for over 40 years, Stacey’s photographs offer a unique, immersive perspective on Australia’s complex ecology. The wild thing, curated entirely from the MGA’s own photography collection, surveys four decades of Stacey’s work. From his lively colour snapshots to his epic black-and-white panoramas, Stacey pays tribute to the wildness at the heart of our existence on Earth.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria is hosting an exhibition of the astounding artwork featured in award winning children’s author and artist Jeannie Baker’s new book Circle. This beautifully illustrated story follows the 11,000km migration of the Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica baueri), the longest unbroken migration of any animal – travelling from Australia through Southeast Asia to its Alaskan breeding grounds and then back to Australia.

The 2017 ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE Festival runs 19 April – 14 May. For more information, visit: www.artclimatechange.org for details.

Image: © 2016 Jeannie Baker. Reproduced by permission of Walker Books Australia.