The smallest measure 2021

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The smallest measure. Jessie Boylan.

Slow emergencies are forms of harm and damage that are not acute but occur gradually and imperceptibly to most of us - like climate change, environmental pollution and radiation. Yet despite remaining largely unseen over time, the effects of slow emergencies are palpable, their relative invisibility rendering the harm they wreak all the more entrenched and difficult to address. How can we recognise and respond to the slow emergencies that are threatening life on earth?

Jessie Boylan is an artist based on Dja Dja Wurrung country in Central Victoria, Australia, who uses photography, video and sound to explore environmental, social and psychological upheaval, seeking ways to engage with our catastrophic times. This exhibition responds to how artists can help our reorientation towards socially and environmentally sustainable futures by focusing on care ethics and practices.

The Smallest Measure is the latest iteration of the Care Project that profiles artists invested in how we relate to the world from a position of care. As part of a larger research project, its presentation here is a work in progress in an evolving response. The Care Project is a long-term research project facilitated by Associate Professor Jacqueline Millner at La Trobe University Visual Arts, Bendigo, and includes a large network of artists, writers and thinkers from many disciplines and places around Australia, producing symposia, exhibitions, artworks, and publications imagining alternatives to the harms of neo-liberalism through care ethics and caring practices: Contemporaryartandfeminism.com/care

The artist acknowledges the Palawa people of lutruwita/Tasmania, as the traditional owners of the land and waterways, where this work was made. Their history, knowledge and culture is embedded within the stories, land, water and air at Cape Grim and is present in the formation of the work shown here