Maps of Gratitude, Cones of Silence and Lumps of Coal
A Centre for Everything (Will Foster and Gabrielle de Vietri)
9 February – 13 April 2019
Monash University Museum of Art
Maps of Gratitude, Cones of Silence and Lumps of Coal interrogates the processes through which the fossil fuels industry ingratiates itself with the Australian public. Maps of Gratitude, Cones of Silence and Lumps of Coal 2019 deploys A Centre for Everything’s signature triadic formation to bring together a network research project, a sculptural, edible intervention and a lecture performance to converge in generative and revealing ways.
Artists, cultural institutions and mining companies all see the network of connections between the fossil fuels industry and the arts in different ways. A Centre for Everything represents these networks in the exhibition via a schematic wall map as well as bringing together key benefactors, beneficiaries and analysts together in a moving image work and to participate in a roundtable discussion on the cultural, social and environmental impacts of corporate money.
The sculptural element of the project takes its form from the thirty-tonne iron ore boulder gifted to a suburban shopping mall in Perth on which mining magnate, Gina Rinehart, has had inscribed her poem ‘Our Future’, an ode to the economic benefits of minerals extraction. Inspired by renewed political efforts to keep the fossil fuels industry afloat, it appears this time as a huge lump of coal, from which coal-flavoured ice cream is dispensed at key events and locations. Frottaged documentation of Gina Rinehart’s poem, in its original and recently altered form, accompanies the sculpture. As part of their project A Centre for Everything also presents an interactive lecture performance and workshop that embodies and unpacks the complex web of relationships between money and culture with the aim of ending the ties between the arts and climate change.
Click here for interactive map.
Photography Christain Capurro and Tatjana Plitt
Maps of Gratitude, Cones of Silence and Lumps of Coal Includes the following works and materials:
Fossil Fuels and the Arts (video lecture) 2019
2-channel HD colour video, sound
approximately 45 minutes
Research assistance: Tori Ball and Andy Butler
Fossil Fuels and the Arts (network map) 2019
HP Latex Print on HP PVC Free wall paper
3.9 x 2 m
Coal as Ice 2019
coal ice cream, steel, papier maché, gloss paint, sink system, freezer box, plywood, epoxy resin, wheels, brakes.
2.1 x 1.2 x 1.2 m
Fabrication assistance: Lucas Maddock, Stephen Palmer
Ice-cream flavour development and production: Zak Bennett
Sound production: Michael Pulsford
Service team: Catherine Ward, Christian Taylor
Our Future 2019
Graphite rubbing on tracing paper
56 x 43.5 cm each
