Coverage (micro), 2016

Reclaimed glass (slumped), 1.5m x 2m

Town Hall Gallery, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia

Saturday 25th June - 21^st August 2016

Curated by Mardi Nowak and Dr Kent Wilson

Exhibiting artists: Andrew Mezei, Tony Lloyd, Connor Grogan, Christie Torrington, Alice Wormald, Kate Shaw, Ara Dolatian, Ben Taranto, Kevin Chin

Coverage (micro) is twenty low relief glass objects fused by slumping broken fragments together. This work utilises glass as a waste material to highlight how we humans are progressively urbanising the planet, collecting en masse in constructed environments, and producing infinite amounts of waste material. Our waste material accumulates and finds its way into natural environments, in many cases becoming part of the existing landscape or forming new landscape.

The Anthropocene is a term widely used to describe a new era in which humans have altered geological conditions and processes. So much so that our presence can be detected in the atmosphere, the oceans and the rock strata. We live in an era where we produce more carbon dioxide than an active volcano and transport more material than rivers and erosion. We are a collective force visually impacting the landscape in much the same way as a major geological event such as a volcanic eruption. Artist and writer William L. Fox describes our visual impact as the Anthroposcenic - where humans have framed the natural world with our art and architecture. Coverage (micro) imagines a sublime world in which we have demarcated and geo-engineered every possible inch of the terrestrial realm.