How often do we take note of the strange weather? With the onset of global climate change, weather patterns historically used by societies to anchor and frame the concept of seasonality are becoming less predictable and reliable. Traditional tales guiding ideal preparation, planting, and harvesting times lose their value as knowledge, and all life on earth, from insects to plants, from farmers to fishermen, and from insurance companies to industrial giants, is forced to evolve and accommodate to new circumstances.
At the same time, the increasingly urban nature of our lives, with climate control and accessibility to global goods and services, effectively insulates us from change. Living within modernity’s capacity and mechanics of control, it is easy to forget (and even deny) the abundant evidence of change outside. The artists’ works included in Weather Amnesia offer visual insight into the profound disruptions that are under way. With strangeness becoming the new normal, the exhibition makes us wonder and think about what kind of future awaits us.
Watching, Dull Edges (the northern hemisphere of a 23°27′ tilt), 2017
Courtesy of the artist
Side Table: a traditional hygrothermograph
Coffee Table: Mass Timber Institute with Fiona Lu
iPad mounted between windows: a Live Bird Migration Map
Watching, White Ibis (detail), 2019
Courtesy of the artist
Presented in conjunction with the Jackman Humanities Institute’s 2019-2020 research theme Strange Weather.
Weather Amnesia
September 18, 2019 – June 26, 2020
The Jackman Humanities Institute
Works by: Lisa Hirmer, Tania Kitchell, Doris McCarthy, Rick McCarthy, David Milne, Graham Noble Norwell, Walter Phillips, Florence Vale, Mass Timber Institute with Fiona Lu, a Live Bird Migration Map, and a hygrothermograph
Cover:
Florence Vale. Pregnant Bird. 1961, watercolour and collage, 15.2 x 12.1 cm. Gift by bequest of Dorothy MacPherson, 1995.
Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid.