Banners for boiling world
21 January – 24 February, 2024
Slot Projects, Sydney
Artists: Chloe Watfern, Priya Vaughan and creative collaborators
Listening to Anie Nheu, Chloe Watfern and Priya Vaughan discussing this show one comment leapt out at me – “about the talking about it – sharing it between ourselves is more important than the result – in that sense I am embracing the ephemeral”.
This project began with a picture book documenting the Great Barrier Reef. Bought as collage material but left on Chloe’s kitchen table within easy reach of 2-year-old Edie, her 5-year-old brother Lou their pens and their crayons. Chloe described - “sitting for a long time with my grief about climate change - the future our children will inherit, the loss we are already seeing (are) some of the things I have been thinking about, while making, or when looking at the images that I’ve made with my children”
The conversation about climate also surfaced in Chloe’s work as a collage artist. Facilitating workshops where art making was a vehicle for consciousness raising conversations and experiences – “and now I’m spending most of my professional time at the Black Dog Institute trying to create research and practices that address the social and psychological dimensions of the climate crisis using art.” And this is where Priya Vaughan joined the project. Together Chloe and Priya facilitated a collaborative collage, Tentacular where “Each tentacle of this collective artwork reaches outwards, seeking connection and offering stories that speak to the ways we might care, in responsible and responsive ways, for ourselves, each other, and the wounded world.”
This then is art that is doing something about the climate catastrophe that is descending upon us. Not by offering didactic graphic monologues that upon reflection may alert us to an imminent danger but through a tangible social interaction where new attitudes and understandings are fostered. These conversations and the images they generate may indeed be ephemeral, their consequence however will inevitably be enduring.
Here is a collaborative work made by Chloe, her children and her friend Priya, and while their conversations may well be more important than their visual offering, you our audience can only be sure of it by pausing and considering their conversation.
Text by Tony Twigg, 2024