DESCRIPTION:

Smoke Signal

2016

Print on Silk

L 1000 H 1550mm

Smoke Signal charts global climate changes in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history since 1891 (the beginning of the data).

In Smoke Signal, images that access a shared visual history from the year’s global weather reports have been juxta-positioned against one another. The work creates an allegory, illustrating the impact of temperature rise across the spectrum of environments from the Australian bush to Antarctica’s polar regions. There is a sense that the tip of the iceberg is all that is currently visible as smoke plume billows out from the underbelly of the iceberg, showing the fall out of escalating weather changes.

Smoke signals are one of the oldest forms of long-distance visual communication used to signal danger and gather people to a common area. Smoke Signal highlights that there are dangerous and unknown consequences to the climate crisis that are visible in realms beyond the conceivability of our senses, signaling a mark of change into the Anthropogenic era.