The Trouble with the Weather: a southern response


UTS Gallery July 3 – August 3

Press release by Anneke Jaspers

Image courtesy of David Haines, Study for Hydrogen Alpha Series, 2007

To be opened by Luca Belgiorno-Nettis Tuesday3 July 6-8pm. Special Saturday opening time 12-6pm throughout the exhibition. Co-curated by Jacqueline Bosscher, Maria Miranda & Norie Neumark

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves."
Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past

Changing weather has spelt trouble before. But now we don't quite know what to make of it, and it feels urgent. As the media, climatologists, environmentalists and politicians vie to shape our understanding and emotional responses, global warming reverberates through every level of culture. The uneasy relationship between technology, nature and culture is unsettled once more. While global warming is a now an emotionally and politically overloaded topic, artists can offer people a way in that is not didactic and heavy but rather opens things up. Artists in this exhibition do this through humour, strangeness, excess, sensual perceptions, intensities, and personal and emotional responses. The Trouble with the Weather doesn’t present any single message or platform, but hopefully will allow people (new) ways to engage with global warming, to find their own ways of thinking and responding to the unsettling effect of climate change.

The focus on the Southern Hemisphere comes from our visceral sense of how we’re being affected, to which these artists wanted to respond -- Australia – droughts and heat and fires – Pacific islands like Tuvalu sinking. This exhibition brings together artists from Australia, the South Pacific and South America. It includes sculpture, painting, photography, sound and video installation, new media, and music. Artists: Isabel Aranda (Chile), Peter Bennetts (Aus), Vera Bighetti (Brazil), Elizabeth Day (Aus), David Haines (Aus) & Joyce Hinterding (Aus), Niki Hastings-McFall (NZ, Samoa), Jonathan Jones (Aus) & Jim Vivieaere (NZ/Cook Islands), Zina Kaye (Aus), Dani Marti (Aus), Maria Miranda (Aus) & Norie Neumark (Aus), Jason Nelson (Aus), Regina Pinto (Brazil), Janine Randerson (NZ), Te Vaka (Tuvalu, Tokelau, Samoa), John Tonkin (Aus) and H J Wedge (Aus).

UTS Gallery
Level 4, 702 Harris St, Ultimo NSW 2007 I Gallery hours: Mon-Fri 12-6pm
www.utsgallery.uts.edu.au I utsgallery@uts.edu.au

Further information: Anneke Jaspers, Assistant Curator: (02) 9514 1652