Larsen's Lost Water

Curated by Edwina fitzPatrick, Larsen’s Lost Water exhibition coincided with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris and was featured in ArtCOP21. The exhibition focused on the ways that the relatively uncharted parts of the globe – the Polar Regions and the seas – are (mis)represented, through exploring context and how introducing an alien or unexpected object into a space affects both components’ readings. The exhibition plays with the dislocated object as cliché, metaphor and metonym in relation to climate change. Ruth Little, from Cape Farewell states, ‘Metaphors allow us to think at different levels of scale simultaneously, linking the minute to the infinite’. However, isn’t there a danger that these metaphorical objects become clichés? These objects and visualizations are impotent as agents for change because - quite literally –‘we’ve seen it all before’ through TV or internet footage