As part of the Debbie Symons' and Jasmine Targett's Making Sense exhibition at Craft Victoria we are excited to present the following two public programs on the issue of climate change and how it relates to artists, makers and the arts generally.
Download the Climate Change, Sustainability and the Arts poster (PDF 4.4MB)
PUBLIC PRESENTATION
Climate Change, Sustainability and the Arts
A public lecture presented by Guy Abrahams
The arts have played a major role in recording and reflecting the state of our society and of the natural world. At certain times we have needed the arts to also be a catalyst for change, a call to action, a pricking of the collective conscience. This presentation will give a brief summary of current climate change science, the challenges that this science poses, and what broad measures may be undertaken to meet those challenges. Presenter Guy Abrahams will review a variety of Australian and international arts-based initiatives that seek bring about positive engagement with environmental issues, particularly sustainability and climate change. The presentation will conclude with proposals for further ways in which the arts could enhance broader understanding of sustainability and climate change.
Guy Abrahams is a Co-Founder of the not for profit organisation CLIMARTE: Arts for a Safe Climate, and a Director of the consultancy Art+Environment. Guy speaks regularly on the role of the arts sector in the climate debate. He was Director of Christine Abrahams Gallery in Melbourne for 22 years. Guy has been a Board member of the Melbourne Art Fair and the National Gallery of Victoria Art Foundation, and National President of the Australian Commercial Galleries Association. He is currently on the Board of the Australian Tapestry Workshop and the City of Melbourne's Art and Heritage Panel. Guy holds Law and Arts degrees, as well as a recently completed Master of Environment. In 2009 he was trained by former US Vice President Al Gore to give presentations on climate change.
www.guyabrahams.com
Date: Saturday 17 September 2011, 1-2pm
Venue: Craft Victoria, 31 Flinders Lane Melbourne (map)
Cost: Free
SYMPOSIUM
Art and the Communication of Climate Science:
Making Sense of how artists and scientists can collaborate on the question of the ozone hole and biodiversity in Antarctica
How can artists and scientists work together to respond to the concerns of the ecological conundrum? How can environmental data be visually explored in innovative mediums? The objective of Art and the Communication of Climate Science is to stimulate dialogue between Melbourne-based artists and scientists to construct a community for future collaborations, further enriching both research disciplines.
Date: Tuesday 20 September 2011, 6-7pm
Venue: Craft Victoria, 31 Flinders Lane Melbourne (map)
Cost: Free
RSVP: Essential via Craft Victoria on 03 9650 7775
Presenters:
Linda Williams (Chair) is Associate Professor in Art, Environment and Cultural Studies and Program Coordinator of the Honours Program in the School of Art. She also leads the Art and Sustainability Research Cluster at RMIT. Along with her work as a widely published art critic, she has published in the field of the history of culture and science, philosophy and critical theory, and is an active member of the Globalization and Culture project in the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT. She is also an international reader for the ARC.
Professor David Karoly is Professor of Meteorology and an ARC Federation Fellow in the School of Earth Sciences. He is an expert in climate change science and was involved, through several different roles, in the preparation of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007. The IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2007, jointly with Al Gore, "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change".
Kate Rigby is an Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and Deputy Head of the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Her research ranges across German Studies, European philosophy, literature and religion, and culture and ecology. Among her many publications in these areas are Topographies of the Sacred (2004), an ecocritical study of European Romantic-era philosophies and aesthetics of nature and place, and (with Axel Goodbody) Ecocritical Theory: New European Approaches (2011). She is a founding co-editor of the ecological humanities journal, Philosophy Activism Nature, and was the founding President of the Australia-New Zealand Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture and a founding member of the Australian Ecological Humanities research network.
Harry Nankin is a Melbourne-based teacher, photographer and artist. Harry Nankin investigates the contested meanings attributed to nature and landscape in modernity. Known for the eerily poetic rendering of simple, often cameraless, photographic processes on location, his work is best described as part land art, part performance and part photography. Harry Nankin has been the recipient of Arts Victoria and Australia Council grants and his work is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, the State Library of Victoria and the Monash Gallery of Art. Harry Nankin teaches at RMIT, LaTrobe and Deakin Universities and is currently undertaking a PhD at RMIT.
Professor Lesley Duxbury, artist and Deputy Head Research and Innovation, School of Art RMIT.
READ MORE about Craft Victoria's related exhibition Making Sense.
