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Right Artist Birungi Kawooya’s three tepees are made of bark fabric
Far right Gayle Chong Kwan’s ‘river guardians’
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS
How do we encourage people to engage with the problem of climate change? By focusing on everyday issues and using artistry and ingenuity to pose important questions. And by making the experience free and fun, as Veronica Simpson discovers in a new Science Gallery show
THERE ARE MANY fascinating things within the eclectic intellectual smorgasbord of science, civic infrastructure, shamanism and art that the Science Gallery’s curators have conjured for their new show at this London Bridge cultural landmark, part of King’s College London (KCL) – but two artworks pack a particular punch. One is a poetic illustration of the connection between sign language – both Visual Vernacular and Chinese Sign Language (CSL) – and the natural world. In a newly commissioned, immersive audio-visual work – Night Bloom, by Cathy Mager and deaf-led collective Spectroscope – three classically trained Chinese dancers incorporate into a dance the symbols for trees, roots and fl owers, among other natural world phenomena. Each gesture seems vividly evocative of the thing it represents – for example, a tree is an upheld hand, fi ngers splayed, ‘roots’ are the same fi nger shape but with the hand dangling. Meanwhile, illustrated animations of fl oral and insect landscapes bloom on the screen, then fade and fragment around the dancers. T e work is refl ecting on the potential, as well as the experience of discrimination and erasure, of the global deaf
community. It’s a beautiful cry for compassion for the planet, and all its occupants. T e other memorable work takes the most
basic human function – excretion of waste – and turns it into a thought-provoking and visually rich installation. Gayle Chong Kwan’s I am the T ames and the T ames is Me is inspired by a Maori saying the artist heard on a residency in New Zealand, ‘I am the River and the River is Me’, which was tied to a recent landmark legal ruling granting personhood for the Whanganui River in Aotearoa. It also emerged from a deep delve into King’s College London’s archives on the history of river-borne disease and pollution, emerging from our careless and casual treatment of the T ames, and the game-changing introduction of the London sewerage system, thanks to 19th-century plumbing pioneer Joseph Bazalgette. Science Gallery curator Jennifer Wong tells
me: ‘Gayle is asking: How do we change our relationship to the river and consider the river’s health more?’ To that end, the artist has created eight ‘river guardians’, who are posted around the gallery, on plinths made from rough-hewn wood to resemble river piers, wearing indigo
Left Night Bloom by Cathy Mater and Spectroscope blends sign language with immersive visuals reflecting on our relationship with nature
clothes Chong Kwan dyed and patterned using items found in the T ames (plus her own urine – once a traditional ingredient in dyeing alchemy). T ese fi gures are embellished with clay items that were fi red with a glaze that incorporates the ashes of actual human dung. Yes, we’re squeamish about that kind of thing, but, on refl ection, I realise we’re only entitled to be so squeamish thanks to the past 200 years of sanitary and sewage system advances. T e artist used the glazes on ceramic necklaces worn by the guardians, and rather realistic- looking strings of ceramic coprolites (fossilised poop) under their skirts. Chong Kwan sourced the ashes from T ames Water sewerage works where, it turns out, experiments have successfully managed to turn waste into breeze blocks. T e guardians, says Wong, ‘symbolise protection and stewardship, health inequalities in the capital and collective action’. (I’m not sure collective action is the priority at present, compared to holding to account the profi t- hungry water company owners who behave so carelessly with our drinking water and waste.) T e husbandry of water resources is only going to get more urgent as climate change impacts hit home. And sparking conversations around this and other issues of climate change is what the curators, both Wong and her colleague Laura Purseglove, hope to achieve. Just beyond Chong Kwan’s installation,
artist collective T e Centric Lab is pondering another crucial element: the air we breathe. I’d call this less artistry, more infographics: the touch-screen display gives us access to fi ve diff erent UK regions, where maps reveal evidence of ‘sacrifi ce zones’ – in that the worst road pollution occurs in the areas of greatest economic and social deprivation. Although UK issues feature, the curators
have drawn from global perspectives and practices to reinforce that these issues are universal – and not all are so deadly serious.
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