Venue: Kingston Arts Centre
A multi-disciplinary exhibition that reworks Antarctic and personal archival materials to warn of our uncertain future due to human-caused global warming. The five-part installation references the historic age of polar exploration, colonial-era whaling and the possible post-human consequences of inaction.
Exploring human-caused climate change through the lens of Antarctica. Inspired by museum and personal archives, the exhibition includes a video and soundscape, and handmade and cast sculptural objects in plaster, felt and wood. These are arranged to offer multiple, shifting viewpoints across key points of human interaction with Antarctica.
It leverages the tension between the continent’s photogenic allure, our exploitation of its resources, and Antarctica’s role as a harbinger of ecological doom.
The work Rendered Blank — a shadowy screen, sculpture and video-based work — reflects colonial-era exploration of uncharted lands, epitomised by the heroic age of polar exploration in the early 1900s.
Rendered Silent responds to images of colonial-era whaling in the Southern Ocean. It features 3D printed and plaster cast whale ear bones based on Antarctic-related specimens held by Museum Victoria.
Rendered Corporeal warns of a possible future if we do not address global warming and the threat of rising sea levels. It consists of human-reptilian head shaped casts emerging from low plinths, as if from the surging waves.
Interlude — a suspended felt and aluminium sculpture with an embedded sound scape — is designed to elicit curiosity.
The book-bound Atlas offers an idiosyncratic contextual guide, containing archival and personal images and works layered through transparent pages.
This poetic installation seeks to engage with the heart as much as the head and thereby prompt an embodied response that may open up the possibility for change.
Image credits: Elizabeth Cole, Rendered Other and Cast Out (detail), 2025, installation shot. Photograph by Astrid Mulder.