Over the summer of Dec 2023 – Feb 2024, KINGS Artist Run is hosting a series of public programs in collaboration with Sticky Institute and Melbourne Women in Film Festival around issues and experiences of heat.
Due to climate change, Melbourne is experiencing more hot weather and heat wave events than ever before. In Melbourne, we currently average 11 days greater than 35 degrees and expect this to rise to 16 days by 2050.
Known as a ‘silent killer’, extreme heat causes more fatalities than all other natural hazards combined. Heat is not as visible or visually shocking as other climate hazards such as flooding or bushfires. This means it does not have the same awareness, understanding, or management attention as that of other hazards.
There is a public misperception when it comes to the issue of extreme heat risk. Many people do not think heat poses a risk to them – we want to raise awareness of the fact anyone can experience heat stress, particularly those with an existing vulnerability.
Explore the related exhibition 50 degrees and STRAY VOLTAGE screening of Do Brumbies Dream in Red? now
Set amidst the ravaged and regenerating landscapes of Victoria and New South Wales, Do Brumbies Dream in Red? considers the systems which position the Snowy Mountain brumby and the catastrophic 2019–2020 Australian bushfires within a time of ecological uncertainty.
The moving image component intersects imagery of fire and heat as an industrial process, contrasted against the ecological changes of south-eastern Australia over the course of a year. Feral horses, ever present in high plains, serve as a metonym for the ways we relate to, and attempt to control, nature.
To register or learn more about the event click here.
Join us Saturday 24 Feb for performances by Debris Facility and Kori Miles, to be followed by a live improv set with Public Leisure into the evening.
Debris Facility performs text alongside sound and entropic ice installation. Assembling info-poetics through decomposition, we dive into the waste infrastructure of plastics, grasping at the micro -macro practices of oily material supply chains.
Kori is an interdisciplinary and process-based takataapui artist, currently working and living on sacred Wurundjeri land in Naarm/Melbourne. Their practice manifests visions that confront the ongoing damage of colonial and heteronormative social structures, whilst concurrently fostering a space for contemplation on transgression, eroticism, liberation, humour, healing, regeneration and resilience.
Public Leisure are a Footscray-based trio that blend elements of Alternative, Soul, Jazz, Electronica and Hip-Hop. Performing a rare improvised set, Public Leisure will be joined by a special guest, Oliver Wheelan.
Performances begin at 4pm, followed by improv set at 5pm.
Juni Per interviews Kit Regan on their experience of homelessness and heat, exploring housing justice and the potential of systemic change and solidarity within the housing crisis of Naarm/Melbourne.
Click here to read the full interview now.
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Over the summer we have collated resources and readings around heat safety and awareness, from climate change to eco practices, sustainable housing to cool cities. The Reading Room will be launched on Sun 17th Dec 2pm and we are excited to announce this will be a new permanent part of KINGS. Following the summer, we plan rotate through different themes of interest to provide a space of learning and respite from the hellfire that burns around us.
To access the digital Reading Room click here.
In 1985, the astronomer and science-communicator Carl Sagan testified before Congress in the U.S. about climate change. Although his warnings were terrifying and distressing, he delivered them in his typically calm and soothing voice. As a juxtaposition, the artist has layered Sagan’s testimony on top of a fireplace relaxation video. Fire also has the ability to be terrifying and distressing, or calm and soothing, depending on context. In the upper right corner of the video, a year-counter ticks away, moving slowly (or, rather, quickly) from 1985 to 2023—a period of almost 40 years. “If you don’t worry about it now, it’s too late later on,” Sagan warned. Question is, have we done enough?
Henrik Haukeland was born 1980 in Sweden, and is now based in Naarm/Melbourne. Conceptually, his work often deals with the body—both physical and social—as well as the corresponding ideas of consumption, excess, and transformation. Arts education includes the Academy of Fine Arts in Bergen, Norway, the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, U.S., and the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in Sweden. He has had many exhibitions in galleries and art institutions predominantly throughout Scandinavia. Exhibitions in Australia include BLINDSIDE in Melbourne and Airspace Projects in Sydney.
Eco Binded is a developed chronicle of Green’s 2019 video work, ‘Ochre, in Pink.’ The evolution of this work was necessary, and relevant to Green’s expanding practice, working with text, and connectivity of language. This work, filmed in Green’s hometown of Queenstown, Tasmania, was created on her first solo trip home, and climbing Mt Owen to a small open plain of sandy, pink ochre. The intentional isolation needed to connect, speak, and relate to this space in an ever-changing context, the crushing of ecologically damaged soil; the practice of walking on this Country, as a way to regain autonomy, and radically reclaim.
Edwina Green is an interdisciplinary research-informed artist that works across sculpture, weaving, moving image, installation and painting to connect narratives of perception, historical re-framing, ecological violence and the post-colonial paradigm and its impact on Country and kin. Green’s practice is strongly informed by her First Nations heritage – as a Trawlwoolway woman from North-East Tasmania.
Green explores the disconnection and reconnection within conceptual experimentation through emerging mixed media works. Her practice engages, provokes and questions our place within society and our interaction with our ideas of self. Green completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Victorian College of the Arts (The University of Melbourne) in 2019, her work has since been recognised nationally and internationally.
hot houses: Artist Book Workshop with Bea Rubio-Gabriel
In this workshop, we will be developing monoprints of the hot houses we have been living in as we talk through the summer/rental experiences together and arm ourselves with tools to survive the upcoming heat.
To register for and learn more about the event click here
Climate, Dreams and Symbols: Writing Workshop with Manisha Anjali
In this writing workshop we unearth dreams, imaginative and unconscious responses to ecological grief and climate change. We look towards the Anthropocene and seek collective imagining amidst environmental destruction.
To register or learn more about this event click here
From paintings of hellfire throughout the Catholic imaginary to Instagram reels of Australia’s 2020 bushfires, this reading group discusses the ways in which global events have been publicly represented. Responding to T J Demos’ eFlux essay “The Agency of Fire: Burning Aesthetics” the reading group seeks to understand what looking to past depictions of disaster can tell us about our current sphere.
To register for the event click here.
The queer ecology collective invite you to participate in a focused reading of the book ‘Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice’ by Naomi Ortiz. Naomi Ortiz is a poet, writer, and visual artist whose intersectional work focuses on self-care for activists, disability justice, climate action, and relationship with place. This will be accompanied by small heat related rituals including a tea ceremony using flowers and fruits collected from participant’s gardens.
To register for the event click here.