Closer, closer

Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison
A Hemline of Sky Through Smoke
A Hemline of Forest Through Smoke
and
A Hemline of Water Through Smoke
2020
Three artists' books, in process

A look at a work in progress, in this geological epoch — the Anthropocene — as things “collapse into something different”. These artists’ books will be launched at this year’s Melbourne Art Book Fair at the NGV, and you can follow our process via #ahemlineofsmoke.

In 2020, we are going to make everything we do, big and small, about caring for our environment. We are going to fight to change our country to one which cares for the environment, turns to renewable energy, stops using fossil fuels, and stops increasing destructive land clearing and devastation of biodiversity. We are utterly dependent on nature and our climate. We believe we can create still a prosperous and caring society where we respect nature rather than destroy it.

Because through action comes hope, we’ve been working on our new series of artists’ books, and donating what we can.

The [artists’ books] began with a picture which began with a catastrophe.

[From fire service updates and images and videos posted from on-the-ground and at-the-scene in a still-ongoing-at-the-time-of-publication series of bushfires, read on twitter in the summer of 2019–20, assembled under the hashtags #AustraliaBurns and #ClimateCrisis. At the time of making these artists’ books,] the full impact on tree species and wildlife will not be known until more assessments are done as fire grounds become accessible. This is climate change in its most fundamental form.

[Collages pulled from] the snare of words [read at the time, and belonging to other people, in news articles, and a collection of books on the bedside table].

[From] foreign syntax.

I'm a grey and blue landscape. An assemblage of disparate scenes. 

All the plants and algae, bacteria, invertebrates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals.

…. the animals confer that it will happen.

…. a range of harsh screeches and metallic whistles.

…. the moment of crisis has come.

(Additional images shared on our instagram, and reposted here: Acrobates pygmaeus by R & A Williams, Australian Museum, and a rescued Acrobates pygmaeus by WIRES; a burnt Brushtail possum rescued from fires near the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, photographed by Jill Gralow/Reuters; and a rainbow lorikeet and a Yellow-tailed black cockatoo that died in the fires washed up on Tip Beach just outside Mallacoota, photographed by Justin McManus.)

Image credit: Gracia Haby & Louise Jennison, A Hemline of Forest through Smoke (detail), 2020, forthcoming artists’ book