CARBON NEUTRAL

G.W. BOT
JON CAMPBELL
THE RIVER YARNERS
ANDREW STYAN
LOUISA WATERS
MARZENA WASIKOWSKA
ANNE ZAHALKA

curated by ALEXANDER BOYNES

18 February - 10 April 2022

Canberra Contemporary Art Space is proud to present Carbon Neutral, an exhibition of works by contemporary Australian artists that addresses the Climate Crisis. This exhibition is part of Aquifer, a territory-wide program of events and exhibitions coinciding with the ANU Climate Update 2022.

Artists have the capacity to provoke meaningful dialogue around the existential threats of fire, drought and ecocide due to human-induced Climate Change through their practice. Carbon Neutral ultimately aims to pose one question: how does an artist produce work to inspire hope and optimism to face the biggest challenge in our lifetimes, without leaving a carbon footprint? When I first conceived this exhibition, I ambitiously proposed that artists would have to offset the carbon emissions produced in their studio practices to create artworks that were carbon neutral. For example, G.W. Bot could plant 100 trees to counteract the use of steel in her work. Marzena Wasikowska could use a solar-powered camera, computer and printer, and deliver her works by bicycle. This all seemed like a fantastic utopian idea until COVID-19 hit, and then life got very difficult for artists, let alone those trying to make art about the Climate Crisis.

Many of you will have been at strikes and rallies in recent years, are living off-grid, recycling, growing your own veggies, switching your banks and energy providers to green alternatives, and working on schemes to fight global heating. This is all part of what Prof. Christof Mauch from the Rachel Carson Centre calls ‘Slow Hope’, that we could just possibly tell our grandkids that this is what we did, that we tried a million small things and worked our hardest, and that we did manage to turn the tide and not destroy the planet.

In the toughest of times, people have always turned to the arts to give us hope. I want to deeply thank all of the artists in Carbon Neutral for dedicating their practices to the most urgent issue of our times, for giving us pause to reflect upon our actions and showing us optimism for the future.