The Complete Entanglement of Everything Exhibition 2020 by Dunedin School of Art

The Complete Entanglement of Everything Bridie Lonie

The world is changing around us in ways that are sometimes more, sometimes less evident or explicit. In Ötepoti they are present, but far more so in megacities such as Kolkata, or Shangahai, low islands like Kiribati, or desertifying regions like the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia. Those changes are reflected in the term Anthropocene, a catch-all term used from the beginning of this century to indicate the transition from the stable climates of the Holocene period that had nurtured most human experience, to a far more dynamic climate caused by global warming. There are as many alternatives to the term as there are positions about what has caused the destabilization of our ecosystems, so the term is used here to open rather than close discussion. Indeed, when earth scientists sought evidence in the planet’s strata to ratify the term as a geological period produced by human behaviour, they found radionuclides, plastics and agricultural fertilizers. These, as much as climatic changes, have led to transformations in the ecosystems that were once regarded as more stable than anything humans could make. They are implicated in the cause of global warming: the emissions of greenhouse gases as a by-product of the energy required to fuel the economic system that most people now see as normal, natural and unalterable. Yet the irreversible changes in the planet’s weather systems are caused by the exponential growth in the use of fossil-fuelled technology for a human population that has itself been growing exponentially. The growth of these technologies has quickened since the latter part of the eighteenth century, although the seeds were sown long before as humans developed industrialized systems for agriculture that were tied to commerce.

The complete entanglement of everything is a reflection on how this changing environment feels and is understood by artists, primarily from Ötepoti. Donna Haraway sees this period as the Chthulucene, thinking of underground spiders, and of underlying connections. She uses the term ‘entanglement’ to help us to imagine different futures, where species might have more to do with one another, and where new engagements might offer new moralities. The Anthropocene is irreversible but might be mitigated if we humans change the ways we generate and use energy, the waste we produce, and the ways we share resources. It is a time for a new approach to caring for the non-human world, and a time to draw on the Indigenous thinking that still places kaitiakitaka, care for the world’s resources, at the centre of cultural activity. It is a time for mourning, and a time to pay attention to the non-human entities both living and inorganic that have been ignored as being irrelevant to human flourishing, but on which we depend entirely. Whether explicit or implicitly, the artworks here address the causes, the impacts and the ways forward even though they were made in in the context of the artist’s everyday work rather than in the development of a theme. They reflect the shared concerns of the contemporary world, just as the preoccupations of the nineteenth-century middle classes that appeared in the artworks that we now enjoy as Impressionism reflected the concerns of that period. The themes of the Anthropocene are emergent: they are the felt life of the situation, held within artworks, because artworks hold the things we value and care about, and give us space and time to negotiate what we feel. Earlier, the need to translate the scientific

information to show what might come was paramount. Today it is already here, and artworks may help us feel, understand and deal with it. Artworks dealing with complexity can also help us recognise the value of the more complex, systemsfocused sciences, that we continue to need. If the kaupapa seems a little large, I suggest that you experience the exhibition first, find connections for yourself, and return to this text. The text does simplify the messages somewhat, but the artworks offer a deeper experience, so, in a phrase to those unfamiliar with experiencing such artworks: let the work itself do the talking.

The exhibition Heramaahina Eketone’s He pötiki whatiwhati toki – a child who breaks the adze, draws from Mäori thought to reflect the idea that a particular strength, the patu, has been broken, and the capacity to care for the world needs restoration. Eleanor Cooper’s Bö is a means of performing that kaitiakitaka; it is a staff to be held while protecting sealions, and it stands by the podium of the symposium. Louise Beer reminds us of the night sky, the place from which we all come, made as we are of stardust. In another form of kaitiakitaka, Marion Wassenaar reminds us of the connection between the coalsack and the sandbag, each dependent upon the other: without the use of greenhouse gases for energy, we would not need to protect our low-lying areas with sandbags or dykes. Marilynn Webb pointed out in the 1980s the risks involved in the then-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon’s ‘Think Big’ projects. Her Taste before eating series is a pointed observation of the ongoing toxicity and resource depletion these entailed.. The delicate balance between political action and information sharing can also be found in the Phantom Billsticker posters, created by, for example, Meg Brassell-Jones and Pam McKinlay draw on the artists working with scientists as part of an ongoing collaboration between Otago Museum, the Dunedin School of Art and the University of Otago. These works have been exhibited in Christchurch as well as in Ötepoti,

and are the more public outcome of an art/ science exhibition around issues to do with water and ocean health. Like all such projects, they both directly and indirectly reflect the concerns of the Anthropocene. Toothfish's graphic works will be familiar to many here in Ötepoti, where they make explicit the position of the Extinction Rebellion. Neville Cichon’s arguments for alternative energy sources give us a glimpse of an Australian viewpoint. Christine Keller’s teatowels that in their woven forms demonstrate the separate strands of the pollution of our waters are a daily reminder to care for what goes down the sink. Rob Cloughley’s chronometer is another reminder of the difference between our assumptions of everyday continuity and what is actually happening as the planet warms. Many thinkers argue that Western philosophy does not pay enough attention to things in themselves, and that artworks can bring us back to a closer relation with the world that is consistent with the entanglements of cognition, emotion and experience. Alex Kennedy, Michael Morley and Michael Greaves ask us to pay attention to the molecular and elemental nature of the planet’s materialities, in large and smaller scale. Charlotte Parallel invites us to listen to the sounds of the Harbour Basin as they play through the dense layers of material that form its substrate. James Robinson asks us to pay attention to the ways that the waste we leave behind can form palimpsests, archaeological layers, of everyday experience, and how the artist can use these to build new imaginings and new archaeologies. The slow contemplation of the patterns that objects both form by themselves and are formed by artists reminds us of the value that things we dismiss hold in themselves: their energy, their durability, their specificity. Madison Kelly maps and layers the changing habitats of the urban wild corners that can be found in every crevice of every environment. These include small wastelands that we must now value as conservation land, where the daily life of the nonhuman persists, largely overlooked but vital for the flourishing of all species. Kaitiakitaka applies in all environments.

Some things last far longer than anyone expected. Plastic is one such material and is a preoccupation for us in the Anthropocene. Esta de Jong’s tall black guardians remind us that we chose to create something that would outlive us, as if we were making gods to redeem our behaviour. Kristin O’Sullivan Peren’s slow burning colourful images were filmed from different groupings of waste, such as the remnants of a summer Christmas Dinner. Her Rubbishleguim parodies Joseph Banks’s eighteenth-century Florilegia, designed to classify new products found by the colonizing explorers for the British Empire’s emporium. Her bright swathes of colour are played on tired, obsolete computers that struggle to maintain the image, fade, and redeem themselves. They remind us also that the energy required to generate each Google search, each financial transaction, each digital moment, uses real energy and generates greenhouse gases. In another view of this, Jane de Wagt’s plastic gleaners now collect not nourishment but the protection for their food sources. They also remind us that, as always, the essential workers are those at the bottom end of the food chain. The biopolitical connections between inequality and the collection of data can be found in Johanna Zellmer’s identity tags that meld indicators of citizenship and the technology used to test DNA. These tags and samples provide data that are used to deal with inclusions and exclusions based on the categorizations of sovereignty that either enable access to resources or result in whole classes of people without status or identity. Barry Cleavin is similarly concerned with data, particularly the hidden datamining that generates alternative currencies that are used to manage political events for the good of people far removed from the sovereignty of the state, but also require vast amounts of energy. To generate that energy, habitat is destroyed, both deliberately and as an unintended consequence. The Anthropocene is awash with unintended consequences, but without action our responses are entirely irrelevant to the non-human inhabitants of the planet, who do not gain an increase in their standard of living through an

increase in the gross domestic product, but instead lose both habitat and species life. Michele Beevors wraps small knitted shrouds around forms based on the bones of more everyday species than those glamourised by earlier political art dealing with climate change. Today we do not wish to see starving polar bears but must still be reminded of the effects of climate change on small animals such as frogs, and whole habitats that have become plastic. Beevors, too, is concerned with the Enlightenment methods of categorization that detached species from their ecological niches to separate them out as product or curiosity, to be painted, drawn and measured. The common places we see a variety of species, namely the zoo and the supermarket or butcher’s shop, are juxtaposed in Rachel Allan’s work with the mythic and specific qualities of non-human sentient beings as they occur, in anthropomorphic form, for human use. Yet certainly a focus on human community and collectivity is necessary. This can be seen in a dystopic way: Brendon John Philip’s figures sheltering in a darkness resembling the inferno are wreathed in a kind of caring that acknowledges the sense of despair, as do Lucinda King’s simultaneously luminous and dark goauches that build on earlier histories of plagues and famines. Neil Emmerson’s gentle reminders of the tragedies experienced by gay people in cultures that reject them point to the consistency of discrimination as a tactic of control, while Graham Fletcher’s Twin Moon references the exploitation of the Pacific Islands, suggesting through its use of the sugar sack the practice of blackbirding, of detaching people from their homes to exile in slavery in the sugar cane fields of Australia. Others look to the value of small-scale resilience and opposition. Jenna Packer celebrates small communities, placing them in an alternative future where small stand-offs and familial protection seem the best alternative to the operations of corporate business. Her stadium, constructed of the bones of the cattle-beasts that have led to the degradation of our water systems, awaits the floating of its ark-like form, at the edge of the harbour a hundred metres from where you

are standing. Packer also plays in a light-hearted way on the siege mentalities, spaghetti westernlike home-made tactics that might offer both resilience and resistance. Tim Barlow also looks at the possible alternative futures of opportunities left behind in the past but now perhaps ripe for re-use, celebrating the technologies and skills that might support different pathways. Mandy Joseph reminds us of the Japanese knowledge of climate change in records of the flowering of the sakura, the cherry blossom, across centuries. Thomas Lord, Blair Thomson and Sue Pearce use the properties of paint to consider the intermingling of materials, allowing paint to play out the complexities that are so important in the understanding of feedback systems and engagements between the organic and the inorganic. Ruth Evans’s game Go Mine forms community as it trains its players to negotiate the legislation around resource consents and mining rights. Simon Swale’s armour of the banana box of global trade and the sailcloth of the past might offer a different kind of resistance. Similarly, the pervading sense of the twinned significance and insignificance of the individual’s role is played out in Jane Venis’s and Hannah Joynt’s parodic micro-tactics. In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the Anthropocene plays out in a landscape until very recently celebrated for its pristine qualities and now largely polluted and increasingly less predictable. Zero1 New Zealand Arts Incubator's Living Map indicates the city’s vulnerability to sea level rise. The country’s larger systems impinge on Ötepoti. Pam McKinlay’s weaving demonstrates the complex structures of glacial ice as it moves toward meltwater, indicating the connections between snow and glacier for the land beneath and beyond, as the waters move to the coast. Janine Randerson looks at the implications of North Island kauri dieback for those of this species in the southern regions, considering the properties of healthy kauri in their molecular aspects. Our harbours and estuarine areas are mapped by Becky Cameron, who reminds us that we can still navigate these areas even though they are changing. The swelling seas of such archetypal marine images as those by Steev Peyroux were

once the province of most children but now the surfer’s everyday knowledge of wave patterns may be necessary for anyone living on the coast. Flooding is a theme for the city as a whole, though the research on South Dunedin has taken centre stage. The full scale of the flow of waters is conveyed by Adrian Hall, as he leads us to imagine the tired sadness of mud-covered flats after all variety and life distinction have gone for them. Flooding destroys both human playground and ecological habitat. Scott Eady’s image of the impact of this flooding for schoolchildren reflects the impossibility of the collectivity of school sports in this area, but Janet de Wagt juxtaposes Macandrew Bay with Constable’s The Hay Wain, suggesting the regular inundation of the Taieri plains, once the food basket of Ötepoti, now focused on the global marketing of the cattle and dairy industry. Peter Nicholls protests the destruction of the braided streams and landscapes of the Waitaki basin to generate markets for milk products in areas that have hitherto existed perfectly well without them. That global connection is constant. Our imaginations are preoccupied with the complex dialogues between the protagonists in global politics. David Green compares the rhetorical, combative and politicized stance of the Trump administration with the need for measured analysis as the world makes difficult choices about the Covid-19 pandemic. Andrew Last’s protection work, the hand sanitizer as an amulet against the transmission of disease, indicates the doubleedged sword of the global connection that gives us free trade and the ongoing economic development that bring us the Anthropocene. This is a world that seems upside down. The unintended consequences of the human desire for self-improvement undercut the planet’s very capacity to deliver it, while the centring of human flourishing on the development of new products has replaced the non-human world with concrete, plastic and a connectivity that ignores the locatedness of any particular body. Pete Wheeler’s child averts his eyes from what he does not know, while Mark Bolland’s empty swimming pool/ark

awaits the unlikely possibility of replenishment from dry mountains. Sharon Singer’s child takes a bolder path, setting off with his pet to another planet, though we imagine he will also be taking himself. In their very early dialogue on rising sea levels, the protagonists of Helen Mayer Harrison’s and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle (1974-84) made this commitment: “And…you will feed me when my lands can no longer produce/ and I will house you /when your lands are covered with water”. This exhibition asks its viewers to ask themselves “What nourishment do we need? What experiences are most valuable? What can we do without, so that we take care of our own environment and therefore of others?” And, ultimately, “What must we have to live?”

Bridie Lonie

The literature in this field grows daily, in the sciences, in the humanities and in the visual arts. Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison, The Lagoon Cycle, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University 1985.

Thank you to all the artists and to those who lent works for the exhibition. Exhibition Essay: Bridie Lonie

The term Anthropocene was tested rigorously first in Crutzen, P. Geology of mankind. Nature 415, 23 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/415023a,

Exhibition Curatorial Group: Bridie Lonie, Pam McKinlay, Marion Wassenaar

Ongoing work on the concept In the earth sciences can be found here:

Design: Joanna Wernham Design

http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/working-groups/anthropocene/

Printed by Dunedin Print on Mohawk paper and Curious Matter card stock.

Jason W. Moore’s Anthropocene, or Capitalocene? Nature, History and the Crisis of Capitalism Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016, draws together the subsequent decade of alternative and counter-proposals, including Donna J. Haraway’s “Staying with the trouble: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Cthulucene” (34-76). Haraway uses the terms entanglement, tentacular, and assemblage, arguing for the importance of myth and fairy tale in imagining alternative futures where we need “a much better SF game, in non-arrogant collaboration with all those in the muddle” (60).

Paper and card sourced from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) products. ISBN 978-0-908846-62-7 (print) ISBN 978-0-908846-63-4 (online)

Exhibition The Complete Entanglement of Everything 28th September – 2nd October, 2020 Dunedin School of Art Otago Polytechnic 1

Rachel Allan

Alex Kennedy

Tim Barlow

Lucinda King

Louise Beer and John Hooper

Zero1 New Zealand Arts Incubator

Michele Beevors

Thomas Lord and Blair Thomson

Mark Bolland

Pam McKinlay and Henry Greenslade

Meg Brasell-Jones, Pam McKinlay et al

Michael Morley

Becky Cameron

Peter Nicholls

Neville Cichon

Jenna Packer

Barry Cleavin

Charlotte Parallel

Rob Cloughley

Sue Pearce

Eleanor Cooper

Kristin O’Sullivan Peren

Esta de Jong

Steev Peyroux

Janet de Wagt

Brendon John Philps

Scott Eady

Janine Randerson

Heramaahina Eketone

James Robinson

Neil Emmerson

Sharon Singer

Ruth Evans

Simon Swale

Graham Fletcher

Toothfish

Michael Greaves

Jane Venis and Hannah Joynt

David Green

Marion Wassenaar

Adrian Hall

Marilynn Webb

Miranda Joseph

Pete Wheeler

Christine Keller

Johanna Zellmer

Madison Kelly

Andrew Last

Link to online catalogue: https://issuu.com/dunedinschoolofart/docs/the_complete_entanglement_of_everything_exhibition

Rachel Hope Allan 2 trains and a monorail. 2019 Archival print on Moab Slickrock Metallic paper 300gsm Framed 1000mm x 1000mm

Ribbons & Combs. 2018 Archival print on Moab Slickrock Metallic paper 300gsm Framed 1000mm x 1000mm

VJFB. 2020 Archival print on Moab Slickrock Metallic paper 300gsm Framed 1000mm x 1000mm

pretty on the inside. 2020 Archival print on Moab Slickrock Metallic paper 300gsm Framed 1000mm x 1000mm

My animals are cradled in cryogenic code. Forever real, forever active, forever alive. And while I concur with Sontag’s proposition that “photography converts the whole world into a cemetery,” I propose that my simulated replicants stimulate ideas around immortality not mortality.

Tim Barlow Living for tomorrow, today HD video, artifacts

‘Living for tomorrow, today’ is a moving image and object display that traces the beginnings of an archive based on a mapping of climate change attitudes. The project focuses on the intersection of climate attitudes, attitude change and how these are situated in imagining alternative future scenarios for human activities and economies. The display will also seek ongoing contributions from local communities and individuals for their own attitudes and adaptations to the climate change predicament.

People interested in participating can contact Tim Barlow at email; timbrlw@gmail.com

Louise Beer + John Hooper Pale Blue Dot Collective Under the Fading Light Moving image

This film depicts Louise’s two long term views of the night sky, from the South Island and central London. Earth’s rotation creates day and night cycles, and its orbital motion and tilt of its axis causes seasonal changes which are used by flora and fauna for ecological processes. Artificial lighting is devastating these natural rhythms. It is easily forgotten that we are on a planet that is a single, fragile, ecosystem when looking through this haze to a starless sky.

Michele Beevors Tales of Sorrow and Regret Wool and mixed media

Wanderer: Dromaius novaehollandiae Wool and mixed media

Last Plague (detail) Wool and mixed media These few works form a part of a menagerie of extinction, observed and knitted by hand over the last 15 years. In the 18th century a menagerie described simply as a collection of wild animals held in captivity, signalled hope, not only for scientists on the edge of new discoveries but for a population keenly awaiting the arrival of the new and exotic brought to Europe from places as far removed as New Zealand, Australia and Africa sealing the fate of all of us in forging the future of science over religion. Entertainment and entitlement above everything spread like a disease infecting the whole planet. Extinction: coined by Cuvier the 19th century gave us just a few years to damage the planet irrefutably.

Mark Bolland Loop, 2012 Inkjet print on archival Epson matte paper 75cm x 50cm, Framed

‘Loop’ is taken from the series ‘Nice Background’ 2009-15. This project focuses on image culture and the changing landscape of Aotearoa me Te Wai Pounamu/New Zealand. These photographs are about how our experiences of this place are mediated through images and how these landscapes, their histories, and our experiences of them, are determined by where we stand. Loop depicts the former swimming pool in Lawrence, Otago, with its ‘boat-like architecture, which resembles an Ark in preparation’ (Bridie Lonie).

Meg Brasell-Jones and Pam McKinlay et al Ocean Acidification – It Will Take Your Breath Away Phantom Billboard Posters, 2018

Artists in posters from original Art+Oceans project: Jessica Ritchie; Thomas Lord and Blair Thomson; Ruth Evans; Hope Duncan; Pam McKinlay and Jesse James Pickery; Madison Kelly. There are myriad of possible responses to address the effects of climate change and this is part of our ongoing contribution to its development. Oceans was initially conceived as a collaboration between artist and scientist. The posters are an evolution of one project to another; via a cohesive visual language that held its own among the bombardment of messages in our visual, urban environment (usually so focused on relentless consumption). In this selection of posters the artworks were reframed as a series of message-bearing posters. This may seem like a drop in the proverbial ocean, but what is knowledge without action?

Becky Cameron Blueskin Bay / Waiputai estuary, 2018 Work on paper, plus ceramics

The Blueskin Bay / Waiputai estuary is a constantly changing place, affected on a daily basis by tides and weather, and by longer-term shifts in climate and land use. In 2018, I worked with Candida Savege (national Tipping Points project) as part of the Art+Oceans project. Candida Savage and her team are collecting and analysing samples to study how the estuary responds to the stressors of excess nutrients and sediment. I’ve collected samples of materials from the area of the estuary: clays, sand, ochre, shells and organic matter. I’ve used these to create ceramic and drawing based works, investigating the properties of these materials and combining them in different proportions. I aim to create art works that explore both the natural processes of erosion and sedimentation that take place in the estuary, and the experimental methods of science.

Neville Cichon Fire and Flood Digital photographs, looped

Fire and Flood presents two unique series of artworks on environmental challenges facing us that translate scientific evidence to stimulate much needed dialogue and understanding. A mix of still life and location photography are used to present simple images for the viewer to unpack. Rising sea levels and coastal erosion is the focus in one series that illustrates the changing nature of the environment and how it may impact our lifestyle. In this series mathematical formulas are united with other signifiers to bring relevance to complex climate change data. Across the different works featured in Fire and Flood anxiety contrasts with humour in recognition that everyone may not receive one visual communication approach effectively. A consistent theme is the use of everyday objects and this is considered important to form a connection and illustrate how climate change is embedded within our daily lives.

Barry Cleavin

Escape from the Data Base 1. 2020 Escape from the Data Base 2. 2020 Escape from the Data Base 3. 2020 Escape from the Data Base 4. 2020 Artist’s Proofs Barry Cleavin was awarded the ONZM in 2000 and an Honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Canterbury in 2005. He currently lives and works from ‘The Boojum Press’, Portobello, Dunedin.

Rob Cloughley

Climate Chronometer Stoneware. Found Steel Object Height 1560mm

Has the sand run out? Almost. Just a few granules left before we move into the next period. Or perhaps we can turn it upside down and let them all run through in the opposite direction from where they came? Will you help?

Eleanor Cooper Bō (fighting staff for working among rāpoka sea lion colonies) Hand-planed and carved white oak, ground charcoal, epoxy resin inlay, made to the dimensions of an Okinawan karate bö staff

The Department of Conservation gives rangers working among räpoka colonies broomsticks, to defend themselves, while undertaking flipper tagging. Curiously, everyone’s intuitive movements with the broomsticks were the same basic movements I learned as a student of Okinawan karate, where one of the traditional weapons is the bö. The ornamentation depicts subantarctic bladder kelp, which forms giant forests around Maungahuka / Auckland Islands and is the immediate habitat for the räpoka.

Esta de Jong

Figure from Becoming Darkness.

Janet de Wagt

After Constable, The Hay Wain.

Janet de Wagt The Plastic Gleaners - Macandrew Bay.’ After Millet Acrylic on Board 59cm x 53cm

Gleaners traditionally gleaned a field after the harvest for any stray stalks of wheat. It was backbreaking but necessary work. These modern-day gleaners are trying to stem the tide of plastic debris in the ocean.

Scott Eady Green Water digital print on photographic paper

Every Saturday Little Bear and I walk around Tonga Park and the grounds of Kings and Bathgate Park Schools. I have been documenting the walk with a dusty box brownie camera I purchased for $10 at the St John’s shop on Macandrew. The walk is slow and the technology is slow. It is a weekly routine bided for with eager anticipation.

Heramaahina Eketone

(Ngäti Maniapoto me Waikato)

“E aha ana te aha?” (What’s going on?) Acrylic, Custom Board and Rimu

This work was made as part of the Art+Oceans collaborative art and science project 2018. There are two works of art which make up this exhibition piece. Combined they are “E aha ana te aha?” (What’s going on?)

Ngā Kaitiaki, Poupou carved from Custom board with acrylic paint

There are three Kaitiaki (guardians of the ocean), the most famous being Tangaroa with Kiwa on his right and Kaukau on his left. Hinemoana, the personified form of the ocean, is represented through the colours used. Tinirau, in some körero, is the son of Tangaroa who is represented at the bottom of the carving close to his pet whale Tutunui. The pätiki (flounder) designs painted onto the carving are a memorial to the decline of this food source, from the time when 70 fisherman on the Otago harbour made their living from the catch, to there being none today. This poupou is standing above the broken patu essentially asking you, me, us, “What’s going on? Why is this patu broken? Why do you continue to allow my children to be poisoned?”

Patu carved from Rimu, “He pōtiki whatiwhati toki” – a child who breaks the adze

Although this patu is clearly not an adze the analogy is obvious. Like the mischievous child, who has either purposefully or accidentally broken a treasure that cannot be easily fixed or replaced, the human race, in all its carelessness, has taken our taonga - the ocean, the rivers, the earth - and have managed to do irrefutable damage letting such waste into the environment that a simple and beautiful thing such as rainfall allows more human shit (literally) to flow into our waters and percolate into our kaimoana. My questions to you - “Is this broken carving still a taonga?” And “Can we fix this?

Neil Emmerson The Fall, 2019 Digital and screen print on card 100cm x 350cm

I fear the humanitarian implications of the impact of the climate crisis. A young man has been accused of being a homosexual and thrown blindfolded off the roof of a multi-storied building. The image is rotated through a mirroring of itself, side to side and top to bottom. A repeat pattern is created through its multiplication. Repetition and mirroring are used as signs of excess, inversion and display the contrast of multiplicity and singularity. These overlays build intricate geometric designs akin to the meditative patterns of Islamic design where variation points towards an encounter with the infinite.

Ruth Evans Poroporo, 2018 Textile, embroidery

From #WGWYL, What Grows Where You Live, An Environment Envoy commission as part of Te Ao Türoa - Dunedin’s Environment Strategy. The exhibition featured workshops for skills and knowledge sharing, and a zine providing understanding of where these plants grow, how to source them, and their traditional application in Mäori society - #WGWYL an art collective engaging with native revegetation initiatives.

Ruth Evans Go Mine! 2019 Table top game

Go Mine is a multifaceted project which critically explores New Zealand’s mineral extraction industries, both historically and in terms of the contemporary context. The players are invited to embrace the corporate tycoon within by mining the ‘planet’ deck of cards, winning one over their opponents, and gaining power through the bribing of political figures and those in position of authority. Through the application of a gaming mechanism called ‘nomic,’ players are invited to participate in the game-making process by creating new rules and amendments to established rules during ‘conference calls.’ Go Mine provides players with the opportunity to experience what many of us cannot comprehend – why do these people do this? Why does the CEO of ExxonMobil, or the Prime Minister of New Zealand, demonstrate such little regard for our planet? I feel the answer is this: Because of the power it provides, and because the lives most devastatingly affected are invisible to them, they play this system like a game, and they are winning. When the masses begin to see the game for what it is, they will be able to change the rules of play.

Graham Fletcher Twin Moon, 2020 Acrylic on jute sacking 1350mm x 1110mm

Michael Greaves The Other Side of the Lake, 2020 Acrylic and oil on linen 280mm x 360mm

David Green Well Again, 2020 Single-channel digital video with sound

Sixty years ago, Marshall McLuhan promised the primitive emotional immediacy of “retribalisation” excited through electronic forms of new media. Daily we observe global politics reverberating with his prescient vision. Those who seek power know it: for our subspecies, running with the wild horses of emotion is more immediately satisfying than a slow consideration of facts and figures. This mash-up pitches affect against analysis in the contemporary digital political landscape.

Adrian Hall Coastal Erosion in The SOUTHERN Hemisphere East and North August, 2020 Archival ink digital prints on archival Cold Press paper 3m x 2.5m

These installed images are part of the continuum and my current preoccupation. They are mainly seen from around our Aramoana home and are a small part of the work which has evolved over the last fifteen years here. They relate to active efforts of conservation, and my long history of other installed works which date back to Barry Lett Galleries, in Auckland in 1972. And even before.

Adrian Hall untitled (the Field) March, 2020 Archival ink digital prints on archival Cold Press paper 3m x 4.5m

Adrian Hall Coastal Erosion in the SOUTHERN Hemisphere. For Gunter X-mann December, 2014 Archival ink digital prints on archival Cold Press paper 1m x 1.53m

Miranda Joseph (Prunus serrulata) acrylic paintings on canvas 160cm x 160cm

These paintings are part of a series I am currently working on using my own photographic source material from Tokyo, Japan of the Sakura, or Japanese Cherry tree (Prunus serrulata). Anchored in this contemporary, urban environment the Sakura paintings allude to the interactions between the species itself, the human and the spaces they inhabit.

Miranda Joseph (Prunus serrulata) acrylic paintings on canvas 100cm x 100cm

Christine Keller Effects of Sediment Plumes, 2019 Handwoven teatowels, cotton

Christine Keller worked with Sally Carson from the Marine Studies Centre of Otago University in the 2019 Art+Water project. The weaving is a pair of tea towels. The first represents sediment plumes which appear in the river mouth if the land along the river is not cared for properly. The second is the beautiful and amazingly colourful animals who live in the waters at the river mouth. The label links to marine.ac.nz/ marinelifeart, which gives people an insight of the work of the Aquavan project. Keller started producing hand woven kitchen towels in Dunedin a few years ago. They are simple everyday objects which cost much more than their mass-produced sisters due to the time and effort which goes into them. The added value is due to the hand-made touch of the maker. They are very good at what they do – drying dishes and giving pleasure.

Madison Kelly Present/Forthcoming Handmade paper, charcoal and video documentation detailing the embedded paper traces

Observational drawings made at a street corner in Musselburgh are embedded into handmade paper and allowed to accumulate over time, in exploration of the human and nonhuman communities implicated by future surface ponding in the area. Made in collaboration with geologist Jon Lindqvist, during the 2019 Art+Water project, Present/Forthcoming speaks in the language of trace fossilisation (ichnology) to present a speculative mapping of time, activity, and entanglement of local sites threatened by sea level rise.

Alexandra Kennedy yellowcake, 2019 oil on canvas 760mm x 610mm

yellowcake (2019) is a work which I conceive of as a ‘dirty monochrome.’ Colour is used as material and as ‘matter’ to describe a hyperobject - a fragment or ‘part object’ - that forms part of a continuous field potentially extending indefinitely beyond the frame of the canvas. The title of the work introduces narrative content, yellowcake (urania) being one of the few materialised instances of radiation.

Lucinda King Disciples (outro), 2020 Three works on paper, Pencil and gouache on black paper each 420mm x 594mm

Zero1 New Zealand Arts Incubator Living Map Map: MDF, 3D modelled and router-cut, white powder coat paint, data projector Map’s dimensions 89cm x 88cm x 15cm

The digital map layers are from Surging Seas, the Dunedin City Council, the Otago Regional Council, and the National Library. This project was led for the Climate Kit Exhibition at the Otago Museum, July 2016, by Bridie Lonie from the Dunedin School of Art, along with Sara Dean and Beth Ferguson from the ZERO1 New Zealand Arts Incubator, with the help of Luke Easterbrook from the University of Otago, the Otago Museum, Workspace and William Early at Otago Polytechnic.

Blair Thomson and Thomas Lord Twins Mixed media on canvas 1500cm x 1200cm each, unframed

A collaboration which began in 2011. Paintings are made directly from the surrounding studio environment, where rain and sea water, soil, tree bark among other found objects have all played a part in influencing the final outcome. Twins has been an 8 year journey that finished the weekend before lockdown in March 2020. Original intentions for these paintings were to hold space while provoking discussions surrounding the false dichotomy between humans and nature.

Pam McKinlay and Henry Greenslade Farewell - Tasman Glacier (from the “Ice is Cool” series), 2019 hand woven fine wool khata (McKinlay), electronics (Greenslade)

The Ice is Cool series was woven during the Art+Water project 2019. The series focused on the cryosphere, the source of much of the world’s fresh water. The fine wool/silk scarves are created in homage to khata – white silk scarves traditionally associated with the Himalayan region. The woven symbols incorporated across the series of scarf designs were based on repetition of an ice crystal motif in the cubic form to remind us that every glacier begins with a fragile snowflake. Farewell - Tasman Glacier was a response to site visits to NZ’s receding glaciers. Shrinking glaciers reveal the current impacts of global warming amidst a sea of hard to grasp climate change projections of effects yet to materialise. Here we see “change is rapid if you are a glacier, even though they are slow if you live in the human lane” (Helen Mayer Harrison). For every 1KG of global carbon emissions there is 12KG global ice melt.

Michael Morley Title coming Painting 1.54m x 1.54m

Peter Nicholls Escort through Gathering Clouds

Jenna Packer Harbourside Acrylic on canvas

I have been exploring connections between neo-liberalism and the climate crisis. Harbourside follows ‘Corporate Box’ and ‘The Ascension of the Bankers’. Naomi Klein’s evocative writing gave me reason to extend the metaphor further, turning the Golden Calf into an inhabited carcass on the Otago Harbourside. “Climate change demands that we invest in the publicly owned bones of our societies, made brittle by decades of neglect.” [ N. Klein. This Changes Everything.]

Jenna Packer Riders Acrylic on canvas

Things that keep me awake are starting points for working in the [painting] dream-state. This work comes from watching spaghetti westerns, reading Sci-Fi and thinking about the end of the oil-dependent world, as we know it. Real life predictions co-exist with possible - and impossible - scenarios, and I can step back after the making and, like retrieving a dream, make sense of some of it.

Charlotte Parallel Ecologies of Transduction: Koputai Port Chalmers perspex, sparkfun audio board, steel trolley, buttons and wires, audio tracks

My ongoing interest in participatory sound works uses the processes of mapping, sensing, detection and transformation as a kind of aural forensics. The sound files in Koputai Port Chalmers were recorded using a combination of pickups such as; hydrophone, solar panel-toamplifier transducer and a zoom recorder. The activation of sound, linked to a cartographic object, has the potential to relay the intersecting and often unseen operations of geo-political, economic, ecological and social infrastructures. The corresponding implications are considered ecologies of transduction.

Sue Pearce Toitū 5, (from Toitū Series 1) acrylic on paper 90cm x 143cm

Sue Pearce’s drawings decode her immersive experience of place. Referencing specific sites sensitive to environmental degradation such as alpine native flora habitats and stream beds, Pearce looks downwards at the ground, focusing on land rather than landscape. Tactility and flow are important registers of her experience of place. Pearce layers white fluid acrylic over a black ground to suggest the play of light on surfaces and the tactile qualities of the ground surface.

Textiles Year 1

Blue is a way to describe sadness Cyanotype on Textile, Thread

360cm x 175cm

Artists: Frances Auld, Georgia Castle, Cilla Clarke, Mackenzie Hayward-Williams, Belinda Mason, Meaghan Miller, Iona Stewart, Adele Watson. Special Thanks to Lynn Taylor. The Anthropocene is a broad and perhaps overwhelming subject. For the purposes of this project we located our focus in Ötepoti and looked to the garden – both at the Dunedin School of Art, as part of the Otago Polytechnic Living Campus, and our homes in relation to eco-grief and the potential of “The Great Turning” narrative. In response to these conversations, we made textile squares, using Cyanotype processes and stitch (embroidery, patchwork, quilting) which alluded to our response to ecogrief in the face of climate change. Image credit: Georgia Castle (detail)

Kristin O’Sullivan Peren Rubbishlegium –Lost Paradise. 2020-The Rubbishlegium- Lost Paradise, 2014 [From the series: Semi-Fictional Photographs] Synced 36-channel video, Retired computer lab, 1800 digital photographs

The 2020 Rubbishlegium consists of 34 of the original 74 computer components, Discarded computers from the Otago Polytechnic e-waste program, deprogrammed and re-booted to hold a collection of rubbish images in a digital format. The Rubbishlegium consists of 1,800 images, semi fictional photographs. Compiled into a stop motion video. The Rubbishlegium - Lost Paradise speaks about climate change and the role of the artist in communicating subsequent environmental and social issues The collected detritus response to this anthropocene we live in, and human condition of collecting ‘stuff’ (a segway into colonialism) the packaging, the objects, the plastic the rubbish has grown. Rubbishlegium references the Cooks/Banks Florilegium, Which was collected by a team of Artist, Botanist, on board the HM Bark Endeavour voyage of enlightenment in 1769, which visited Aotearoa shores in its search for Terra Santa Australias. Taking back to England a trove of botanical treasure Taonga which became the founding collections for many substantial collector’s for example, the British Museum, the British Library, the Oxford University Collection, Kew and Natural History Museum and a considerable amount of private collections. Recycle, reuse and reduce was a mantra of the last few decades. We now have human rubbish, as a traded commodity. We need energy to power this global rubbish trade, the search for energy is acknowledged in the dying wherring computers, a secular economy of waste. To put into context the vibrant colour images which make up the Rubbishlegium. LED’s are used as the light source. These photographic studio ‘still life’ of collected rubbish, sans smell, sans grime are patted into a uniformity, although they vary from one family’s rubbish for a month, to travel lists from imagined journeys, and even the reproduction of Colin McCahon’s image ‘The Promised Land’ on a 1995 Te Papa Calendar. The psychedelic colour unifies the many images and creates multitudes of 2D utopian spaces. Together these light works are designed to indicate a troubled sense of Beauty in Paradise and offer possibilities of reinventing a dystopian landscape.

Steev Peyroux

Drift Oil on Canvas 1370mm x 760mm

Locality: Porpoise Bay in the Catlins. Main themes in the painting: the idea of a reflected universe – the sky reflected in the silvery plane of the sea, swirling mists of light caught and multiplied in the greatest light show on earth; the idea of a large bay being like a vessel holding a body of water; and a sense of mapping the land on a grand scale, producing an epic panorama.

Brendan Jon Philip Mem Mixed media on board

In the mystical system of Kabbalah, Mem, representing water, is one of the three mother letters of the Hebrrew alphabet, along with Shin (fire) and Aleph (air) that occasion the formation of the material universe. This work is part of metaphysical inquiry into cycle models of creation, destruction and the phenomenological apprehension of the fluid and mutable play of existence.

Janine Randerson sound composition Jason Johnston Kāpia: fossils and remedies, 2020 Single channel video on Hahnemüle paper screen immersed in fallen kauri leaves and bark solution, thread, sound. Through käpia (kauri gum) this video installation considers scalar relations between geological, botanical and human lives, and the potential for healing and genetic resistance in kauri biology. Macro scale images of käpia on living trees and of fossilised insects and leaves in käpia at the Matakohe Kauri museum recall a time when kauri spread throughout Aotearoa, including central Otago. The video is projected on a biodegradable paper infused with resinous liquid from fallen leaves and bark from a healthy urban kauri tree.

James Robinson The Unsayable Being Said Over And Over (Edgeland Series) 5 panel large mixed media painting 470cm x 260cm

A ARYTHMIC DISTORTION STUCCATO ELEMENTAL MASTICATED CYCLIC SPECULATIVE SURFACE SCAPE OF PAINTING CANABALISED FROM PREVIOUS WORKS THAT SPEAK TO NOTIONS OF “EDGE” AND “LAND” IN RESONANCE TO DAVID EGGLETONS THEMES AND PAINTERLY VISIONRY WORD PLAY...ONE OF A SERIES OF WORKS IN RESPONCE TO THE CURRANT NZ POET LAURITTE “ WHEN GOD WAS THE WORD ... THE UNSAYABLE BEING SAID, OVER AND OVER” FROM “LEGEND”

Sharon Singer Wanderlust, 2019 Acrylic and oil on canvas 710mm x 560mm

Sharon Singer is an award winning Dunedin based visual artist. Her work is held in private and public collections in New Zealand and internationally. She has worked with fairy tales and myth as the subject of her paintings since 2000, Invoking concerns such as narrative and meta-fictional awareness. In more recent years her work has addressed the themes of climate crisis , the Earths spiritual meaning and consumer value, either as a vast mystery or a source of consumable resources. Underpinning all is an interest in the human condition in relationship to nature.

Simon Swale Fairtrade? 2020 canvas and brass sheet metal

This work is part of a series, entitled “Fairtrade?”, that focuses on the production of one of the world’s most popular and highly consumed food items: bananas. Banana production is highly destructive to the environment, a foodstuff that is responsible for the clearing of vast tracts of rainforest and the subsequent use of high levels of agrochemicals that deplete and destroy both the soil and the surrounding eco-systems. Controlled by a few, large, multinational corporations, bananas are generally grown on large plantations with workers living on site, with production rife with human rights abuses. In 2011–2012 alone, seven Guatemalan banana union members were murdered.

Toothfish Posters

‘We live in a time when the entrenched cynicism and side-show antics of politics means that art is only place left where any sort of idealism can flourish. The environment is poised on the brink of a house-of –cards collapse. The human race is in crisis mode. This isn’t a good time to paint a picture of a flower or to try and market your name like a soap brand. Art is more than just a serious game. It’s not just about the fame and money. It is a matter of life or death.’ (Toothfish) Toothfish is an eco-artist and paper warrior which looks to raise interest in environmental issues by producing limited editions of images and posters which are distributed internationally in both the real and virtual worlds. So far, the posters have appeared in over twenty countries – from the Pacific to Great Britain – from Europe to South America.

Small Measures

Spoon MP4 Video (4m49s)

This is a satirical solution to combat local sea level rise. It is filmed at several locations: Dunedin, Auckland, 38,000 ft above sea level and culminates in the Arabian Desert in Dubai. This is one of a new collection of short video works, filmed on a smartphone, by Hannah Joynt and Jane Venis under their collaborative name Small Measures.

43a

Jane Venis Naked and Confused MP3 Soundtrack

Numerous studies in recent years have documented how lower pH (higher acidity) can make it harder for shellfish and tiny organisms to form shells or internal skeletons and to reproduce. So not only will some be naked (as they can’t make shells) but many are confused through their loss of ability to see and navigate. The sea-life in this sound work are in some way threatened by rising acidification, micro plastic pollution or sound pollution which effects their ability to survive. Drifting through the soundtrack you will hear the cry of a contemporary bone flute – similar to a traditional köauau - on which I play a lament to the state of our oceans.

Marion Wassenaar 1/1200 (after Duchamp) Take 3 screenprints on paper

1/1200 (after Duchamp) Take 3 is a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s 1200 coal sacks exhibited at the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme held at the Galerie Beaux-Arts in Paris. This is the third iteration in my use of coal sacks that seeks to explore the catastrophic effects of industrialisation and the impact the use of fossil fuels has on our environment.

Marilynn Webb Miner’s Crumble, 1982

“Since the 1960s Webb has used her work to engage in a consistent and enduring exploration of the landscape. In particular, she has considered the remote and fragile environments found in Central Otago and Southland including Lake Mahinerangi, the Ida Valley, Rakiura/Stewart Island and Fiordland. It is these representations of the isolated or endangered landscape that have provided a framework for Webb’s environmental activism, which is a defining characteristic of her art.” — part of Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s introduction to the Marilynn Webb exhibition. As she discussed in “Marliynn Webb: prints and pastels”, works from Drowned Clutha Pudding and Mining Crumble both drew reference to the impacts of the Muldoon era “Think Big” projects on the sensitive landscapes of central Otago. The texts are in the style of an Aunt Daisy cookbook and were typeset by Alan Loney.

Marilynn Webb Clutha Drowned Pudding, 1982

Pete Wheeler

History doesn’t repeat, But it rhymes Painting, media

From ‘Folk Art of the Apocalypse’. Image, detail.

Johanna Zellmer Political aesthetics: When DNA sequencing meets contemporary jewellery Illumina genome sequencing flow cells; steel pins; Illumina NextSeq carriers; self-adhesive printed film; Eurozone silver commemorative coins

The emergence of Identity Politics in contemporary art in the late 20th century offers a relevant perspective on my work as a craft practitioner. For some years I have made work that comments on both the idea of nationhood, and the politics that regulate national borders. I am fascinated by craft objects that function as symbols for socioeconomic environments, and have consequently been using currency as a jewellery medium for some time. My most recent medium of choice are used Illumina flow cells: Medical glass slides designed for sequencing DNA code. Through the process of fusing, I am essentially turning instruments that measure biological data into a biological state of their own. The work poses questions about the technological advance in DNA sequencing and its potential applications regarding the nation state, borders, migration, embodiment of identity, and governmentality.

Andrew Last Contact, 2020 Pounamu

Contact is made from pounamu, carved into the ubiquitous form of a hand-sanitiser pump nozzle. Placed on a sanitiser bottle at the entrance to an exhibition venue, “Contact” performs its literal function while metaphorically referencing a touchstone; absorbing mauri from all who touch the stone. Contact also functions as a pendant with the cord retracing the flow of sanitizer through the nozzle’s interior channels.

The Complete Entanglement of Everything Exhibition 2020

Articles inside

Steev Peyroux

Janine Randerson

Peter Nicholls

Jenna Packer

Sue Pearce

Michael Morley

Thomas Lord and Blair Thomson

Lucinda King

Alex Kennedy

Madison Kelly

Graham Fletcher

David Green

Michael Greaves

Miranda Joseph

Adrian Hall

Ruth Evans

Meg Brasell-Jones, Pam McKinlay et al

Scott Eady

Neil Emmerson

Michele Beevors

Esta de Jong

Mark Bolland

Janet de Wagt

Louise Beer and John Hooper