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news . l e i o n s v a r i a b i m e n s . D l a c k b o a r d b o n . C h a l k S u n s e t , 2 015 ; a n d , 2 016 t e m p e s t t h e i s e d fi r s t I r a ; W h e n f o n L e t t e r , 2 017 t a f T h e M o n o i e w v I n s t a l l a t i o n . / P a r i s Yo r k , N e w G a l l e r y G o o d m a n M a r i a n a n d , L o n d o n t r e e t G a l l e r y S, F r i t h a r t i s t : t h e . C o u r t e s y t z s t u A m : R o n t o . P h o D e a n i t a Ta c © Multi-Layered Narratives TACITA DEAN In a 2018 interview with Royal Academy, Tacita Dean (b. 1965) stated that she “didn’t care about the long run, caring only about now.” Dean is a British European artist born in Canterbury, currently living and working between Berlin and Los Angeles (where she was the Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute from 2014 to 2015). She is perhaps one of the best-known female artists of her time – a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998, winner of the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006, and a Royal Academy of Arts electee – exploring a sense of history, time and place, as well as the quality of light and the tangible essence of analogue film reels. Dean works across 16mm film, photogravure, sound installation, gouache, artist books and found objects, with an impressive portfolio that transcends categorisation by genre, medium or interpretation. Glenstone Museum, Maryland, opens an installation comprising three monumental chalkboard works – Sunset (2015), When first I raised the tempest (2016) and The Montafon Letter (2017). Affixed to the pre-cast concrete walls of the pavilion, these large-scale, multi-panel chalk-on-blackboard drawings create a panoramic effect as visitors descend into the gallery space. Glenstone comments: “These drawings operate between the didactic and the sublime, depicting – amongst other things – the sea, sky, ships and rocks. Executed on Victorian-era chalkboards, the works manage to evoke both a classroom setting and the murkiness of photographic negatives. The process of erasure and punctuation innate to the medium are in dialogue with the scene and the indecipherable text peeking through the many layers of chalk. There is also a performative element at play: the artist adjusts the works with each installation, changing words and modifying shading.” Dean began working on Sunset (2015) after moving to Los Angeles in 2014. Shrouded in thick cloud, the sunset manages to be both still and moving – impending darkness looms. The motif is inspired by the California sky and recalls the work of Romantic-era British landscape painter John Constable. When first I raised the tempest (2016) takes its title from Act Five in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which Prospero responds to the spirit Ariel: "I did say so, when first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit, how fares the king and ’s followers?" Lightning strikes through the dark, ominous clouds; their forms conjure the supernatural storm and subsequent shipwreck at the heart of the play. Spanning 32 feet, the work is Dean’s widest blackboard drawing to date. The title of The Montafon Letter (2017) alludes to a series of 17th century avalanches in the mountainous Montafon valley of Austria, from which one priest miraculously survived. The scale of these works, alongside their allusions to both tangible and images landscapes, places the viewer at the centre of a dramatic and multi-layered historical narrative. “The process of erasure and punctuation innate to the medium are in dialogue with the scene and the indecipherable text peeking through the many layers of chalk. There is a performative element at play.” Glenstone Museum, Maryland Opens 6 May glenstone.org 14 Aesthetica
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Spanning the Climate Crisis RISING TIDE The ocean is vast, covering 140 million square miles, equivalent to 72 per cent of the Earth’s surface. According to the UN, more than 600 million people (around 10 per cent of the world’s population) live in coastal areas that are less than 10 metres above sea level. Nearly 2.4 billion people (about 40 per cent of the population) live within 100 km of the coast. Regardless of whether you live close to or far away from the coast, marine life (particularly its biodiversity) affects every living thing. From the economy (ocean ecosystems are estimated at $3-6 trillion per year) to health, sustenance and nutrition, right through to available land (the number of displaced individuals is thought to rise to 1.2 billion people by 2050), the issue is intrinsic to the human experience. As we approach 1.5°C of warming (and more realistically beyond, with COP26 meeting in November this year to discuss the parameters laid out in the 2016 Paris Agreement and goals for net zero emissions), the planet begins to tip over into irrevocable change – feedback loops of collapse and destruction. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by 2100, global mean sea level rise is projected to be around a 10th of a metre lower at 1.5°C as opposed to 2.0°C. Just 10 per cent of a metre puts a further10 million people at risk from the related effects. Rising Tide, on view at the Museum of the City of New York, brings together a collection of photographs from Nether- lands-based Kadir van Lohuizen (b. 1963) – works that examine the consequences of rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis, through photography, video footage, drone images and sound work. The pieces range from Greenland to Bangladesh; Miami to New York, documenting the fine lines – both literally and figuratively – between land and sea, the present and the future. Lohuizen notes: “In my reportage I have tried to provide globally balanced coverage. I travelled to Kiribati, Fiji, the Carteret Atoll in Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, the Guna Yala coastline in Panama, the United Kingdom and the United States. In these different regions, I not only looked at the areas that are, or will be, affected, but also where people will likely have to relocate to.” He continues: “What is often forgotten is that before seas flood land permanently, the sea water intrudes much earlier at high tides, thus making once-fertile land no longer viable for crops, and drinking water brackish and undrinkable. Coastal erosion, inundation, worse and more frequent coastal surges and contamination of drinking water mean increasingly that people have to flee their homes and lands in a growing number of locales across the world. Almost no one with whom I have spoken wants to move; they simply have no other choice as conditions worsen.” As we look ahead to the agreements sent out this November, this show is undoubtedly an important part of the climate conversation. “What is often forgotten is that before seas flood land permanently, the sea water intrudes much earlier at high tides, thus making once-fertile land no longer viable for crops, and drinking water brackish and undrinkable.” MCNY, New York Opens 16 April mcny.org . / N O O R i z e n L o h u i r v a n K a d ) . © ( 2 018 l a n d r e e n , G i z e n L o h u i r v a n K a d Aesthetica 15

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Spanning the Climate Crisis

RISING TIDE

The ocean is vast, covering 140 million square miles, equivalent to 72 per cent of the Earth’s surface. According to the UN, more than 600 million people (around 10 per cent of the world’s population) live in coastal areas that are less than 10 metres above sea level. Nearly 2.4 billion people (about 40 per cent of the population) live within 100 km of the coast.

Regardless of whether you live close to or far away from the coast, marine life (particularly its biodiversity) affects every living thing. From the economy (ocean ecosystems are estimated at $3-6 trillion per year) to health, sustenance and nutrition, right through to available land (the number of displaced individuals is thought to rise to 1.2 billion people by 2050), the issue is intrinsic to the human experience.

As we approach 1.5°C of warming (and more realistically beyond, with COP26 meeting in November this year to discuss the parameters laid out in the 2016 Paris Agreement and goals for net zero emissions), the planet begins to tip over into irrevocable change – feedback loops of collapse and destruction. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by 2100, global mean sea level rise is projected to be around a 10th of a metre lower at 1.5°C as opposed to 2.0°C. Just 10 per cent of a metre puts a further10 million people at risk from the related effects.

Rising Tide, on view at the Museum of the City of New York, brings together a collection of photographs from Nether-

lands-based Kadir van Lohuizen (b. 1963) – works that examine the consequences of rising sea levels caused by the climate crisis, through photography, video footage, drone images and sound work. The pieces range from Greenland to Bangladesh; Miami to New York, documenting the fine lines – both literally and figuratively – between land and sea, the present and the future. Lohuizen notes: “In my reportage I have tried to provide globally balanced coverage. I travelled to Kiribati, Fiji, the Carteret Atoll in Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, the Guna Yala coastline in Panama, the United Kingdom and the United States. In these different regions, I not only looked at the areas that are, or will be, affected, but also where people will likely have to relocate to.”

He continues: “What is often forgotten is that before seas flood land permanently, the sea water intrudes much earlier at high tides, thus making once-fertile land no longer viable for crops, and drinking water brackish and undrinkable. Coastal erosion, inundation, worse and more frequent coastal surges and contamination of drinking water mean increasingly that people have to flee their homes and lands in a growing number of locales across the world. Almost no one with whom I have spoken wants to move; they simply have no other choice as conditions worsen.” As we look ahead to the agreements sent out this November, this show is undoubtedly an important part of the climate conversation.

“What is often forgotten is that before seas flood land permanently, the sea water intrudes much earlier at high tides, thus making once-fertile land no longer viable for crops, and drinking water brackish and undrinkable.”

MCNY, New York Opens 16 April mcny.org

.

/ N O O R

i z e n

L o h u i r v a n

K a d

) . ©

( 2 018

l a n d r e e n

, G

i z e n

L o h u i r v a n

K a d

Aesthetica 15

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