Artists: Alicia Frankovich, Caitlin Franzmann, Norton Fredericks, John Gerrard, Simryn Gill, Gabriella Hirst, Angelica Mesiti, Betty Muffler and Maringka Burton, Open Spatial Workshop, Alexandra Pirici, Susan Schuppli, Yasmin Smith, James Tylor.
Curator: Anna Briers
Petroleum, chemicals, and bacteria have become agents of history. Humanity, or rather the settler-colonial project, has infiltrated every environment on a molecular level, resulting in anthropogenic climate crisis. In this state of ‘post-nature’ there are no edges; even plastic has invaded our blood streams. Numerous planetary boundaries have been permeated and transgressed, disrupting the self-sustaining life-support system known as Gaia.
These Entanglements: Ecology After Nature thinks with the molecular, the geological and the biological and their entanglements with social relations. It brings together Australian and international artists that traverse forms such as choreography, sculptural installation, filmmaking, field research, tarot reading, photography, painting, and virtual simulation.
Exploring cross-disciplinary discourses that decentre the human subject, the exhibition thinks with theories of deep ecology, new materialism, and posthumanism, and is indebted to embodied knowledges and First Nations kinship and connection to Country. Working from the increasingly urgent premise that human exceptionalism has led to environmental catastrophe, the exhibition proposes a more ethical, symbiotic, and reciprocal approach to cross-species relations and ways of being in the world.
These Entanglements: Ecology After Nature will include a new performance work by Alicia Frankovich, co-presented and co-commissioned by UQ Art Museum and ACCA. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Cover image:
Alicia Frankovich
Atlas of Anti-Taxonomies, 2019–22 16 dye-sublimation prints on PVC backlit polyester: 6 panels at 180 cm x 240 cm each, 10 panels at 100 cm x 200 cm each; steel, cords, 3 SD videos, colour, vertical. Commissioned by Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand. Exhibition view Gus Fisher Gallery | Te Whare Toi o Gus Fisher. Photo: Sam Hartnett. Courtesy of the artist, Starkwhite, Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland and 1301SW, Naarm/Melbourne and Gadigal Country/Sydney.
Gallery images:
Open Spatial Workshop
Metabolic Scales, 2023 Video still. Courtesy of the artists. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through Creative Australia, its principal arts investment and advisory body.
Angelica Mesiti
Over the Air and Underground 2020. five-channel HD video, 10-channel mono audio, 9 minutes. Installation view, Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh 2021. Photo: Sally Georgiou. Courtesy of the artist, Galerie Allen, Paris, France and Anna Schwartz Gallery, Naarm/Melbourne.
Caitlin Franzmann
recompose 2022-onwards. divination cards, performance and interactive website. Photos: Timothy Birch. Courtesy of the artist.
Susan Schuppli
Arctic Archipelago 2021. HD video, colour with stereo sound, 26:20 minutes. Video still. Courtesy of the artist.
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