M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

This is an interesting question. In the relatively short time
span of the two centuries or so since the European
colonisation of Australia, the flora and fauna have not
fared well from the impact of modernity, from modern
techniques in farming or mining, for example. In that
context, it is worth noting that Australia has the highest
mammalian extinction rate in the world. Moreover,
dramatic changes to the landscape such as the
destruction of old-growth forest, or the endangering of
native species are highly visible changes subject to media
coverage and to a public debate, recently based, at least
to some degree, on an awareness of global climate
change and ecological awareness. Whereas in a country
like England the most dramatic changes to the landscape
happened mainly before the advent of both the green
movement and modern media, so the significant
deforestation of the 17 th century in England, for example,
occurred in a different phase of modernity when it was
understood to some extent as a sign of progress rather
than destruction. This kind of modern environmental
awareness in Australia, and Australia’s relatively strong
profile in the field of eco-critique, does not prevent
Australia being one of the worst offenders in the global
context of carbon emissions on a per capita basis, but
my point is that despite this, environmental change is
highly visible in Australia. Furthermore, for nonindigenous
Australians, the natural environment can
seem pretty harsh, and the climate fierce, so that the
difference between a day or so of 40 degree heat in
summer, which people in Melbourne take as an annual
likelihood, and the prospect of many more such days,
and others where the temperatures have recently
exceeded 47 degree heat for three days consecutively,
along with the combined threat of fire-storms, are
changes that people cannot fail to notice. Hence climate
change is already having an impact here through drought,
rising temperatures and fires, just as rising sea levels are
encroaching on some of the Polynesian islands, and these
kinds of changes will soon become more evident
elsewhere. These are the kind of factors that seem to me
give some indication of the public impact of HEAT, and
its quite extensive media coverage in Australia.
Let me play devil’s advocate here: It is
commonplace for artists and curators to declare
that art can inspire activism and change lives.
Nonetheless, the cynical might say that while
inspiration is possible, change is not, at least not
the kind of change that will alter national
environmental policies or fund scientific studies.
How would you respond?
It is crucial that governments and those responsible for
developing national environmental policies, along with
the general public, take seriously scientific studies that
warn about rapid environmental change. The voices of
scientists are very important in this context, but science
is not the only model of knowledge we have, and there
are also cultural forms of knowledge that have their own
particular effectiveness. Sometimes people develop a
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kind of numbness when faced with statistical information
about the development of global warming, or worse, a
kind of resigned nihilism. People can react that way to
cultural experiences too, but then the arts have the
capacity to be powerfully affective. There are never any
guarantees that such affective responses will lead to a
significant shift in the way people think - but then, that is
true of other, more strictly rational appeals to people’s
awareness. More to the point, the artists in this
exhibition did not set out to convert anyone to their
own ideas about climate change, what they did was to
exhibit works that manifest some of their own ideas and
feelings about it. Based on factors such as attendance
figures and written comments, the substantial media
response and critical reception, it seems to me that there
was significant public interest in the art works in this
exhibition. What the longer term results of that interest
will be is impossible to measure, though I think it would
be fair to say that many people would have found it a
memorable experience.
Since the emergence of the avant-guard,
conservative critics have complained that politics
dilute authentic artistic values, changing art into
a propagandistic vessel. Artists have countered
by charging that all art is political; the best work
challenges prevailing ideological assumptions,
sometimes taking great risks in order to so. In
designing this show, did you attempt to
accommodate the spectrum of stances
represented by environmentally engaged art, or
were you more interested in forging a strong
unified message with the greater potential for
impact?
I am not too interested in what conservative critics have
to say, or for that matter those apparent ‘progressives’
who see art in a simple-minded way as a vehicle for
propaganda. I was interested in what seemed to me to
be art of a high quality that engaged in intelligent and
reflective ways with the question of rapid environmental
changes in the non-human world.
At a very deep level, this kind of artwork often
shares a romantic sensibility, a nostalgia for a
holism that seeks redemption and refuge in the
sublime. Visual poetry becomes a way for artists
to reach individuals that might otherwise remain
indifferent and unmoved. However, we partly
define nature by co-opting an externalized stance
exacerbated by the aesthetic response. Inside the
gallery setting, in other words, the cultural
response to the subject of climate change is
understood to be “cold” because the viewer first
responds to the works as aesthetic objects.
(Georgina Read’s paintings are beautiful, as are
most of the works in this show.) Can the
exhibition space ever facilitate what might be
called a “hot” or unmediated emotional response
in viewers, or is this impossible -- or even