Wonder and crisis collide in We Are Exploding — an exhibition by Emily Parsons-Lord in partnership with Abbotsford Convent.
We Are Exploding examines air as a site of collapse. Across two major installations, Things Fall Apart and Trembling, the exhibition uses materials of and in the air: carbon from pollution, lead shot, meteorites, plant distress pheromone. Suspended, dilute, and thunderous, these materials of the climate crisis speak to both the invisibility and the spectacle of collapse, and the confluence of personal and environmental catastrophe.
Things Fall Apart
A column of mist mixed with a plant distress pheromone (methyl jasmonate) falls into a vast circular void. Viewers are invited to step beneath the vapour, soaking in the splendour of the work while simultaneously inhaling its disaster.
Trembling
Yoking planetary collapse from the deep past to our current moment, this work lingers in the suspended moment just before impact, holding in tension the instant and the aeon. Ice bergs of dry ice sublimate, releasing contentious materials of the air: fragments of the KT Boundary, the residue of the meteorite that saw the end of the dinosaurs; spent lead shot, collected from the grounds of a shooting range; carbon derived from air pollution; fragments of mining explosions emerges from carbon dioxide in its solid state. The impacts are amplified, giving voice to the edges of our perception to notice the slow accumulations and collisions of disastrous force.
