Points of Return: Online Exhibition
Our inaugural online exhibition features twenty-five international artists, each exploring aspects of the climate emergency, offering commentary & creative nature-based strategies.
Adrift (2019) | Adam Sébire: AnthropoScenes
The exhibition’s title references the fact that we are close but have not yet reached the dreaded “point of no return”. There are still opportunities for our civilisation to curb climate change and move toward a balanced, more sustainable and harmonious way of inhabiting Earth. Artists are in a unique position in being able to creatively present scientific findings in an accessible manner by raising vital awareness, offering their audiences entry points, and inspiring collaboration and communal action.
Explore our six themed viewing rooms:
Ground · Heat · Retreat · Eclipse · Root · Return
The Carrier Bag Series (2020 – 2021) | Mixed (reclaimed) media | Erin Woodbrey: Impressions of a Geologic Afterlife
“Particularly with the new IPCC report that came out this week and the crumbling of our worlds on many other levels, this exhibition is ever so timely.”
We are delighted to share this new exhibition, the result of many months of work. We’d first like to draw your attention to the latest and long-awaited report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published on the day Points of Return went live. Many believe that this could be one of the most important assessments in human history.
It urges us to act and adapt, so that the future is ‘liveable and sustainable.’ It tells us also that the window for action is ‘brief and rapidly closing’, more-so than scientists had previously believed. The point of no return has been brought closer.
The report reminds us that no matter how quickly we limit greenhouse gas emissions, the planet is already warmer and is set to get even warmer in the coming years, bringing more frequent heat waves, higher sea level rise, more extreme weather events; and worse is coming. Many of the impacts of climate change, the report states, are already irreversible. We should have started adapting to this reality a long time ago.
The authors inform us that the emissions of planet-warming gases must be cut by nearly half by 2030. We must rapidly move away from the combustion of oil, gas and coal. UN secretary-general António Guterres has stated that ‘delay is death.’
Slow Violence (2021) | The creation of the work | Glacial melt upon blue-tinted sheets of paper | Miguel Sbastida: Slow Violence
In Points of Return, a similar survey of the state of the planet is undertaken – but from a creative perspective, allowing an emotional exploration of the issues we face. Artists Tanja Geis, Fiona Carruthers, Miguel Jeronimo, Pieter Colyn and Emilie Miller take fragile eco-systems as their muses, resonating with the report’s statement that ‘the climate crisis is inseparable from the biodiversity crisis.’ The need to protect our wild places and wildlife is fundamental to coping with the climate crisis, and maintaining the resilience of nature depends on the conservation of ‘30% to 50% of Earth’s land, freshwater and oceans.’
Purple Sea Urchin (2021) | Charcoal on paper | 42 x 32 inches | Tanja Geis: An Ecosystem Under Threat
An accompanying IPCC document states that targeting ‘a climate resilient, sustainable world involves fundamental changes to how society functions, including changes to underlying values, world-views, ideologies, social structures, political and economic systems, and power relationships.’ These words chime with the preoccupations of all the featured artists, especially those in our Eclipse and Return Viewing Rooms.
Favela Offshore #2 (2021) | Video projection | 12:00” monochrome (stereo) | Felipe de Avila: How to Postpone the End
Along with the scientific data brought to light in recent years comes, for the artists in the exhibition, a deeper appreciation of what life on Earth really means. These works raise awareness, they champion nature-based strategies, they examine and deconstruct and reflect; but more than that, each of these artists celebrate our planet. Why else would one create such works, if not to express something of the uniqueness of life?
The IPCC report closes with the words ‘…a liveable and sustainable future for all’, which says it all. We can contribute to that future, together. We can give our resources new life, we can listen to the land, learn restraint, campaign… we can move from being plunderer to protector.
From Jungle on my Mind former poachers turned forest rangers | Photographic series | Miguel Jeronimo
“Every voice can make a difference.”
Designed & curated by artists David Cass & Gonzaga Gómez-Cortázar
Banner image by Ulrike Sparre (from 'Ear to the Ground') | All artworks © the artists | Used with permission | Exhibition title & text © A La Luz, 2020
