Our Future

Background: This research emerges from the field of socially engaged art, which involves creative practices that employ public engagement strategies to stimulate debate and action on social issues. It is informed by theorist Claire Bishop's assertion that art’s political potential is in its capacity to generate “the destabilising action that produces dissensus about what is sayable and thinkable in the world” (2012). Responding to the curator's brief to create a poster that provoked public dialogue on the unfolding climate emergency, “Our Future” drew on a history of activist/artist posters but provoked by resisting the brief to clearly communicate Contribution: Developed in collaboration with Woi Wurrung/Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung linguists and Elders, "Our Future" consists of local language group's translations of the phrase: “Our future depends on respecting Country and Indigenous ways of being”. It drew on scholars Tony Birch and Zena Cumpston assertion that to combat the impacts of climate change the settler community must engage with Indigenous practices of caring for Country. The fact that the poster does not communicate its message to most readers underscores settler illiteracy in First People’s expertise that is necessary to fight climate change Significance: Curated by Will Foster and commissioned by CLIMARTE, the work was exhibited alongside posters by 9 other leading contemporary artists at Testing Grounds, and pasted up on Melbourne's streets. Dr Haley Singer in the catalogue essay described "Our Future" as generatively provoking “ecological anxiety”, elaborating “I do not have the skills to see Country through concrete. I live this illiteracy, but I am not often asked to confront it in the way Our Future [...] asks me to”. The work is in the State Library of Victoria's collection, shown in their “The Changing Face of Victoria” exhibition 2021/22, and featured in the book, Art + Climate = Change II (Johnson & Gellatly 2021)