Polarity: Fire & Ice

Presented in association with Fremantle Arts Centre

Polarity: Fire & Ice is an exercise in contemporary truth telling. Through the immersive film and photographic works of artists living in Australia, Canada and the Arctic, the exhibition considers the climate catastrophe – from the melting ice caps of the Arctic to devastating summer fires that have become commonplace in Australia. It connects our local decisions to global impacts, and offers poetic, salient and challenging artistic reflections on the climate emergency and our shared futures. Importantly it considers knowledges held by First Peoples around the world as central to understanding our changing climate and in contributing to solutions founded in care for land and waters.

The 2019 Australian bushfires were an unprecedented environmental disaster that unfolded across the country, leaving a lasting impact on both human and natural ecosystems. The scale and intensity of the fires were exacerbated by climate change, which contributed to extreme weather conditions, and the fires sparked global attention leading to calls for urgent action on climate change.

The melting Arctic ice is an alarming environmental phenomenon that has garnered significant attention in recent years. As global temperatures continue to rise, the once-stable ice in the Arctic region is rapidly diminishing. This unprecedented melting poses severe consequences for the planet and to humanity.

Through the presentation of immersive film and photographic work, this exhibition offers a salient reminder of the interconnectedness of our planet, stitched together through expanses of shared land and water, weather patterns that know no boundaries and through changing climates that increasingly presents challenges to our lives. Bringing together the voices of First Peoples from both Australia and Canada, along with settler artists who work closely with First Peoples, who all consider climate change, care for Country and climate action, Polarity: Fire & Ice connects our existence in Western Australia to truly global concerns. It queries the impact of our wealth generation and reliance of resource extraction, asking us to consider what our future really looks like without significant action or changes to the way we live. Polarity: Fire & Ice speaks to elemental forces of the natural world and climate change at almost antipodean locales, while also exploring the ways that these same forces have been harnessed to care for the environment, across millennia. The artists affirm the relationships First Peoples have to lands and waters, and the selfhood that resides within these spaces, reminding us of what is at risk if we do not take action to protect our natural world.