Celebrating the dynamism, vitality and power of natural phenomena and the more- than-human world, “The Charge That Binds” is a major new exhibition reminding us of what is at stake at a time of ecological emergency.
Infused with both optimism and grief, the exhibition draws together works that celebrate a world composed of multifaceted, multispecies relations and pulses—foregrounding and reimaging modes of relationality and connection beyond the disruptive, extractive logic of capital.
Featuring recent artworks by Australian and international artists, alongside several key new commissions, the exhibition traverses a broad range of media including painting, sculpture, moving image, sound and choreography. This lively assembly of practices celebrates and cultivates interdependency and reciprocity across difference in both a poetic and pragmatic register.
Grappling with the entwined issues of ongoing climate change and entrenched social inequity, works presented conjure new (and old) stories about our interconnectedness with the living world and each other, underscored by a recognition that natural exploitation, cultural domination and territorial occupation are often part of ongoing colonial processes and thinking.
“The Charge That Binds” adopts a collective curatorial model, with oversight from a curatorial advisory group including Dr Michelle Antoinette, academic and lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Asian Art, Monash University; Professor Brian Martin, artist and Director of Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab; Professor Peta Rake, Director of University of Queensland Art Museum; and Professor Naomi Stead, Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform, RMIT University.
Projects include:
An immersive soundscape from Wurundjeri educator, language worker and artist Brooke Wandin, presented in dialogue with a large-scale drawing by Quandamooka (Stradbroke Island/Minjerribah) artist Megan Cope.
Brook Wandin’s biiknganjinu ngangudji – hear our Country (2023) features environmental sounds recorded on Country intermingled with community members enunciating Woiwurrung language place names from across the breadth of Wurundjeri Country. Brooke also sings lyrics from All Gone Dead (1998), a song with includes the clan names of 14 mountains in the Yarra Valley identified by Kurburu, an elder of the Boonwurrung people, and recorded in the 1840s by William Thomas.
Megan Cope’s accompanying wall drawing, biiknganjinu ngangudji – see our Country (2023),
is derived from drone footage capturing a 360-degree view of the horizon line at View Hill near Healesville. Cope’s illustration wraps around three walls of the entrance to ACCA’s main gallery and is rendered over rich golden ochre taken from Coranderrk, an important cultural site for peoples of the Kulin nation.
Large-scale mobile sculptures by Naarm/Melbourne artist Francis Carmody explore the impact of geomagnetic reversal events on the evolution of life on Earth. Taking inspiration from the Laschamp event—a magnetic anomaly that occurred around 42,000 years ago—these works examine how shifts in the Earth’s magnetic field could have led to increased surface radiation, triggering genetic mutations and influencing the course of evolutionary history.
A new sculptural installation by multidisciplinary artist Alicia Frankovich intersects references to advanced astronautical technology with organic life. A model of a NASA starshade, an apparatus designed to help view yet unseen exoplanets and stars, is grafted with exploratory sculptural 3D prints of underwater invertebrate known as a Crinoid or feather star, an ancient marine creature whose rhythmic movement through the ocean resembles a kinetic unfurling of plumage.
Relational Ecologies Laboratory is presented by the Climate Aware Creative Practices Network—an Australia-wide alliance of creative arts educators, researchers and practitioners working in tertiary education, established to deepen engagement with the challenges posted by climate change. The laboratory is a relational artwork encompassing installations, workshops, reading groups and other activities staged over the three months of the exhibition, in which network members build an inventory and do what climate aware artists do best: work across precarious platforms, sharing, reworking, collaborating and understanding the materiality of artistic circular economies.
A major sculptural installation by Māori artist Brett Graham that reexamines the civic monuments and historical legacy of colonial aggressions in the Waikato War of 1863- 64. The form replicates the shape of the gun turret which sat atop New Zealand’s first purpose-built war vessel, the “Pioneer.”
Participating artists:
Zheng Bo, Francis Carmody, Climate Aware Creative Practices Network, Megan Cope & Brooke Wandin, Alicia Frankovich, Brett Graham, Jack Green, Mel O’Callaghan, Izabela Pluta, Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett, Emilija Škarnulytė and Sorawit Songsataya
Curated by
Shelley McSpedden
at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art – ACCA
until March 16, 2025
