A sampling from “What is your relationship with water?” by Naoe Suzuki.

Climate change exhibit opens at Brickbottom Gallery

By Haley Houseman

At the Brickbottom Gallery on Sunday, Jan 25, the exhibit Weathering Art: Creative Expression in the Era of Climate Change opened with a small but lively reception.

There, the audience could interact with the artists and the curators while examining the multi-media exhibition. The show will be open until Saturday, February 28, closing with a 7 p.m. presentation and dialogue entitled Collapse Interviews: A Gathering of People With Nothing In Common will screen the video Collapse by Lydia Eccles. The panel following the movie will include the artist and movie research volunteers.

The show focuses on responses to the 2012 essay, Crossing the Chasm: From Denial to Acceptance of Climate Catastrophe by Steve Wineman and the fate of climate change efforts. The essay asserts that this decade will determine our future relationship to the world around us. It takes the position that climate change is inevitable, and that here is a need for a discussion what can be done to remediate its impact.

The work is primarily sculpture, as well as dimensional paintings and some installation work. Visitors are greeted to the gallery space with large vintage chalkboard, the surface of which is covered a large-scale chalk drawing of an ancient sea creature.

The piece is titled Drawn with the Remains of its Ancestors, by Ellen Young, and features a large hunk of chalk in the chalk tray. It includes a direction to touch but not use. The piece sets the tone for an exhibit whose work primary focuses on human relationship to the resources available to us.

Another piece, What is your relationship with water? by Naoe Suzuki, chronicles an ongoing inquisition into the complexity we face in trying to fix an overwhelming relationship. Other pieces like the installation Uncertainty Principle use an immersion space to reflect on the new realities of climate.

The Brickbottom Gallery is a non-profit exhibition space established in 1989. It is open to emerging and established artists in the greater Boston metropolitan area. It is run by the Brickbottom Artists’ Association (BAA), housed in the same building. Gallery hours are Thursday – Saturday, 12-5 p.m.

Brickbottom Gallery (and Artist Association)

Address: 1 Fitchburg Street, Somerville, MA 02143, United States

Phone: (617) 776-3410

www.brickbottom.org