10 May Simon Finn and Stephen Haley | Ocean Imaginaries
MARS artists Simon Finn and Stephen Haley are currently exhibiting works in ‘Ocean Imaginaries’, open Friday 5 May – 1 July at RMIT Gallery.
Responding to a recent turn to the ocean in the environmental humanities, this international exhibition curated by Linda Williams considers how reflections on the ocean are aesthetically reconfigured when viewed from a contemporary urban perspective.
From the early modern era of global maritime expansion in the late 16th century, the ocean has been valued as a conduit for colonial expansion and trade in raw materials and consumer goods, most of which continue to be shipped across the world today.
During this period the ocean was also used for its apparent capacity to absorb waste: from the industrialised waste of heavy metals to radioactive material and plastics.
Effectively, the most insidious forms of oceanic pollution remain invisible to the human eye, while the serious effects of ocean acidification, mercury poisoning or pollution by micro-plastics, along with the gradual effects of ocean warming, are slowly, but surely, afflicting every ocean on earth.
Part of Climarte’s ART + CLIMATE = CHANGE 2017 festival – a festival of exhibitions and events harnessing the creative power of the Arts to inform, engage and inspire action on climate change.
