On Fire: Climate and Crisis

‘On Fire: Climate and Crisis’ profiles contemporary Queensland art in a time of significant ecological change. It situates this analysis during the emergence of what fire historian Stephen Pyne describes as the Pyrocene—the fire equivalent of an ice age, with Australia as one of its major epicentres.

One year on from Black Summer, the devastating 2019-20 bushfire season, the work of fifteen emergings, established, and posthumous artistic voices are presented here to frame an understanding of this theory of a new, incendiary era, and engage with closely related themes of global warming and climate threat in this state.