Slow Hope, Beaver Galleries, Canberra
Alexander Boynes and Mandy Martin
28th November – 15th December 2019
Artists Alexander Boynes and Mandy Martin have collaborated over the last six years on four large public exhibitions addressing the issue of climate change. Their current project is ‘Hi-Vis Futures’, at the Canberra Museum and Gallery until 4 February 2020. ‘Slow Hope’ at Beaver Galleries is a parallel and complementary exhibition, prompted in part by a seminal essay of the same name by Christof Mauch. In a call to ‘rethink ecologies of crisis and fear’, Mauch beseeches us to believe in our power, individually and in populations, to make millions of small gestures to mitigate our carbon footprint and avert full-blown catastrophe. Alexander Boynes is a Canberra-based artist whose practice encompasses painting, photography, print media, light-based work and video installation. Works in ‘Slow Hope’ extend his recent exploration of the social and environmental ramifications of fossil fuel extraction. He has hand-drawn and solvent-washed elegant tonal images on his signature aluminium supports, his totemic eucalypts standing ‘en garde’ against cooling towers and smoke stacks shrouded in vapour.
Slow Hope: Rethinking Ecologies of Crisis and Fear by Christoph Mauch
An exhibition of hope for triumph over disaster by Sasha Grishin for The Canberra Times
