Ellen Johansen and M G Walker invited to be part of a new exhibition titled Sea Conversations.

Sea Conversations Exhibition is a collaboration between Waiheke Community Art Gallery, Lisa Waldner, a PhD candidate and artists. Artists were asked to make work that speak to the importance of our oceans and how human activities and lifestyles have had an impact on climate change. Themes of power, beauty, fragility, cultural significance and human impact will be considered in the works.

Artists’ Statement

Our concept of Sea Conversations is inspired by a recent book on climate change entitled,

The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell, an internationally-respected climate change journalist.

Goodell’s interviews and data provide a sobering picture of our contemporary world in which many of our greatest cities may be critically impacted by rising water within a short 10 to 20-year period. Goodell also documents considerable denial among decision-makers world-wide, making threatening outcomes ever more likely.

Through these images, as artists, we hope to highlight the reality that an entire way of life, for not only the world’s great cities, but also for the countless small villages who depend on the sea for their livelihoods, may soon be tragically and unnecessarily submerged and thus lost.

The artists live and work in the Hauraki Gulf, Auckland, New Zealand, where human impact on the sea is already visible in this once unspoilt marine environment.

The Water Will Come 4.jpg — The Water Will Come (detail)

By
Ellen Johansen & M G Walker
(Unique Archival Digital Print)