Professor Malcolm Fairbairn is a member of the Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology Research Group, Kings College London. His research lies at the boundary between cosmology, particle physics and astrophysics. In particular, he is interested in dark matter, dark energy, cosmological inflation and particle astrophysics. He has been awarded an ERC consolidator grant running from 2015-2020 to study dark matter and particle physics in the early Universe.
The exhibition ‘Borderlines’ gives form to the conceptual, geo-political, economic and cultural impacts of borders. It draws attention to the ownership of the earth beneath our feet, the UK border in Ireland, tribal territories, anarchic polar exploration and the world-wide distribution of natural resources.
Dr Tony D. Sampson is reader in digital culture and communications in the School of Arts and Digital Industries (ADI), co-founder of Club Critical Theory and organiser of the Affect and Social Media conferences. His publications include ‘The Spam Book’ (Hampton Press, 2009) ‘Virality: Contagion Theory in the Age of Networks’ (Minnesota, 2012), ‘The Assemblage Brain: Sense Making in Neuroculture’ (Minnesota, 2016) and ‘Affect and Social Media’ (2018).
Jasmine Pradissitto describes herself as “a practising Quantum Artist and Creativity Warrior”, a “painter who sculpts with light and colour using the scientific knowledge accumulated over years of experience”, creating ‘holograms you can touch’. Forms inspired by nature, the human condition and scientific breakthroughs, are melted and reshaped from plastics into sculptures as a commentary on an ever increasingly Anthropocene world.
Cartography, methods of visualizing information, history, current events, satire and humor are some of the subjects that captivate Dan Mills. He began to incorporate maps into his work in the early 1990s while exploring the quincentennial of what is euphemistically referred to as The First Encounter. Since then, he has made series about history and colonization in painting/collages on large roll-down school maps that explore imperialism by creating an atlas reconfiguring the world, about loss in history through erasure and overpainting maps, and that use maps as a space to visualize data about wars and conflicts.
Featuring – Zaria Forman: Drawings that show the beauty and fragility of Earth ; Al Gore: The Case for Optimism on Climate Change ; Satish Kumar: Soil, Soul and Society ; Sam ‘Ohu Gon III: Lessons from a thousand years of island sustainability ; Tega Brain: Eccentric Engineering: Thoughts for the Anthropocene ; and Francesco Sauro: Deep Under the Earth’s Surface, Discovering Beauty and Science.
Featuring – Zaria Forman: Drawings that show the beauty and fragility of Earth ; Al Gore: The Case for Optimism on Climate Change ; Satish Kumar: Soil, Soul and Society ; Sam ‘Ohu Gon III: Lessons from a thousand years of island sustainability ; Tega Brain: Eccentric Engineering: Thoughts for the Anthropocene ; and Francesco Sauro: Deep Under the Earth’s Surface, Discovering Beauty and Science.
CLIMARTE is a Melbourne-based organisation that produces, promotes, and facilitates arts events with an alliance of arts practitioners and organisations that advocate for immediate, effective, creative, and inspired action on climate change.
Following on from the successful 2015 inaugural event, ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2017 will take place across Melbourne and regional Victoria from 19 April until 14 May, providing a platform for the discussion of the challenges, opportunities, impacts, and solutions associated with climate change.
Heather Davis is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at the Pennsylvania State University where she researches the ethology of plastic and its links to petrocapitalism. She is the co-editor (with Etienne Turpin) of ‘Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies’ (Open Humanities Press, 2015) and ‘Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada’ (MAWA/McGill Queen’s UP, forthcoming 2017).
‘Drawing is political?’, examines the ever changing context which determines the politics of how we might look at, see, and understand Drawings today. In doing so, discusses the contemporary relevance of the medium of Drawing, in the context of the volume and velocity by which we experience images digitally in contemporary western culture. A fundamental proposition considers whether ‘traditional’ Drawing approaches are merely an antidote to the digital world, or in fact, whether original and authentic drawn responses are now more important than ever?