Visual Art Exhibition Review | Brian Rope
Cries of the Anthropocene: Creative Practice in response to climate change - Various Creative Practice Circle members
The Chapel, Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture (15 Blackall St, Barton, ACT, Australia)
2 – 24 April 2025, 10 am - 3 pm, Wed –
Sat (closed Easter weekend)
After a successful exhibition at Wagga, Cries from the Anthropocene is now in Canberra. From poetry to painted car bonnets, the exhibition reflects growing concern about climate change. Creatives from Beechworth to Bathurst and in between (including in Canberra) have joined in response to climate change and its effect on us in their parts of Australia and the world.
The Creative Practice Circle is a network of creative and performing arts practitioners and researchers, born out of Charles Sturt University in 2016. The group meets regularly via Zoom and shares what is happening in the worlds of the members. One of the common threads holding them together is concern for the planet and all its inhabitants. How can they, as concerned creatives, help encourage everyone to act in the face of climate change? The Circle’s research theme for 2024-25 is “Cries from the Anthropocene – How might we respond?” Just one of the suggested research questions was: How might the arts intersect with the grief and anxiety of living in the Anthropocene?
The artworks are very diverse. There are hand-stitched stories which speak to issues of habitat. A variety of artwork media note the decline of the iconic Bogong Moth. Poetry makes the language and issues of the climate crisis accessible. Call to action posters provide ideas and information about small actions they can be taken to address climate change. Here is a selection of installation images that I took at the show to provide readers with a visual idea of the diverse artworks.
 |
| Hazel Francis – Our Paths with Nature - Postcards |
 |
| Frank Prem – I sing (a car a train an aeroplane) |
 |
| Donna Caffrey – Cal to Action posters |
 |
| Claire Baker – broken (n)aimless (mixed media - foam packing sheets, embroidery thread, adhesive dots, broken shells, pebbles, glass splinter, ink) |
 |
| Dr Tracy Sorensen – The Blue House (work in progress) |
And I have to ask, is The Blue House casting a shadow on the wall behind in the form of a church steeple? This work by Sorenson comes with a QR code too (below). Scan it and check out what it reveals about augmented reality.
 |
| Detail of one of the Seven books of tears by Barbel Ullrich – tears that are sobs and tears in our world’s fabric. |
These seven huge books are extraordinarily beautiful – and you are allowed to turn the pages to look at them all.
 |
| Toni Hassan – a four-part installation (acrylic on a reclaimed car bonnet, digital photo printed on rag paper with gouache moths on watercolour paper, textile mask with transfer prints and elastic). The part not shown in these images is a 3:47” (looped) stereo channel video. |
These (and the other artists represented in this exhibition) are not the only creatives addressing the climate change issues. An article in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/385060095_Artistic_Practices_in_the_Anthropocene reviews Western perspectives (in a fruitful dialogue with non-Western perspectives) regarding the climate emergency and artistic experiences amid the ongoing debate about futures currently at stake in the climate crisis or climate emergency. It suggests, correctly in my view, that if the climate crisis ignited in the Anthropocene is a shared crisis - both political and aesthetic - then art, inseparable from life and hence nature, holds a crucial role in nurturing care and the potency of imagining other possible worlds.
Four
years ago, the National Visual Arts Editor of ArtsHub, Gina Fairley, wrote After
two summers that couldn’t be more different – from drought and fires to heavy
rain – conversations about the Anthropocene, and artist activism around climate
change, are ripe for new resolutions. Fairley suggested that a less recited
stanza from Dorothea Mackellar’s much loved 1908 poem, My Country, captured
the mood of Australia’s climate crisis, 110+ years on:
Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army
The steady, soaking rain.
It
is good to see all the artists represented in this exhibition continuing to
explore the critically important matter of climate change. Together they have
created an excellent exhibition with much to look at, read, view on video, and
think deeply about. I strongly encourage all who are able to visit the show in
person.
This review is also available on the author's personal blog here.