This brief show is organised by students from the King’s Art Rooms Society
The artists write:
“At a tipping point, a series of small actions have the potential to cause a larger, more significant change. Once this threshold is crossed, the change cannot be stopped. We are locked into a system with a determined, yet often unknown, fate. Avoiding further descent into the uncharted ecological territory beyond planetary tipping points will require unprecedented levels of interdisciplinary cooperation. We have become desensitised to the conversation about the climate crisis in mainstream media. An alternative to the stock images and empty headlines is urgently needed. The arts in particular can be harnessed as a tool to evoke our emotional response to these issues, and incite movements against climate breakdown, species extinction and ecosystem collapse. This exhibition brings together work from both current and past students and addresses various aspects of the ecological crisis we are in. It confronts the threats facing our planet and takes a critical look at supposed ‘solutions’ to the crisis, questioning current paradigms and provoking us to think about societal teleconnections and the effectiveness of our own, individual actions. But even as human systems continue to respond inadequately to environmental destruction, it is important to foster (careful) optimism and build faith in the resilience of nature. Hope can be used to empower action against half-hearted, even destructive, responses to the climate emergency, and these tipping points can be re-framed. There are two directions in which we can move; with a critical mass shifting the balance in the opposite direction, we may be able to reverse the tilt and prevent ourselves from plummeting over the edge.”
Please contact Mallika Buckle, mb2142@cam.ac.uk, for more information
