Extraction, extinction and post-carbon futures are explored by Australian and international artists in UQ Art Museum’s first group exhibition for 2023, We Are Electric.
Curator Anna Briers said the exhibition highlights perspectives and ideas often overlooked in conversations about energy and a future beyond carbon.
“Issues like how we extract, produce and use energy are widely discussed, but the conversation often lacks diverse or nuanced perspectives,” Ms Briers said.
“In this exhibition, many of the artworks call upon First Nations knowledges around care for Country, while others build queer manifestos for a utopian future.”
Quandamooka artist Megan Cope’s Untitled (Death Song) comprises industrial mining equipment repurposed into musical instruments, and will be activated through a series of live performances by UQ’s School of Music.
Terrella by artist Michaela Gleave, on display for the first time, allows audiences to listen to the Earth’s electromagnetic field using live data from geomagnetic monitoring stations.
The immersive sound installation is a global collaboration with composers, designers and data technicians involving geomagnetic observatories, including Geoscience Australia, the South African Space Agency, the British Geological Society and INTERMAGNET.
A solar-powered drawing machine by artist Cameron Robbins harnesses the renewable energy of the sun and invites audiences to recalibrate their day-to-day expectations around how and when they use energy, and what those energy sources look like.
A new film by artist Elise Rasmussen, In the Valley of the Moon, highlights the complexities of renewable energy.
It was shot largely on the lithium-rich salt flats of the Atacama Desert in Chile and near the Tesla electric vehicle factory in Nevada, and is shown for the first time in Australia.
We Are Electric opens 14 February at UQ Art Museum, James and Mary Emelia Mayne Centre (Building 11), UQ St Lucia campus.
Entry is free.
A media kit is available here.
Media: Alex Tuite, UQ Art Museum, a.tuite@uq.edu.au; +61 403 980 230.
