Exhibiting elemental truths in the Perth Festival: Polarity: Fire & Ice and Wetland

Abstract

During the peak of one of Perth’s hottest summers, Polarity: Fire & Ice at Fremantle Arts Centre (FAC) is yet another timely call for meditations on ecological change brought about by global warming. Showing as part of the 2024 Perth Festival and built entirely of photographic and video works, Nhanda and Nyoongar curator Glenn Iseger-Pilkington brings together Australian artists Cass Lynch and Mei Swan Lim and Tim Georgeson who collaborates with the Indigenous Desert Alliance. The northern hemisphere’s Adam Sébire and Maureen Gruben locate the aesthetics and symbolism of (melting) ice down-under. Collectively, all the works communicate stories of connection to Country in the age of climate change, and nowhere is immune to this crisis: vast tracts of the earth from Boorloo/Perth to Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland above the Arctic Circle, Tuktoyaktuk in Canada’s Northwest Territories, and Australia’s central and western deserts and eastern seaboard.