Angela Brennan, climate change, 2014, painting, future
Summary
Angela Brennan was one of 11 Australian artists who had work commissioned by Climarte, a not-for-profit that advocates ‘arts for a safe climate’, for its poster program. The intention was to create posters that would engage the community to rally around climate change action and ‘convey the strength, optimism, and urgency we need to move to a clean, renewable energy future’. A0 size posters were printed in great number from each artist’s work and displayed at sites around Melbourne during May 2016; they were also shown at an exhibition simultaneously held at LAB-14 Gallery.
Brennan’s poster was printed from this painting, executed in oil on linen, in 2014. In characteristic style, she uses an engagingly bright palette, its boldness emphasised by an irregular grid of black lines. The composition invokes the abstractions of De Stijl artist Piet Mondrian, for whom representation distilled to such simple abstraction reflected an essential balance between nature and the universe – a spiritual order governing the visible world. The fragility of elemental balance is literally writ large Brennan’s portentous message: ‘the future is what it used to be’. The determinedly playful, hand-rendered script might perhaps suggest a disconnect between humanity and the natural balance of forces that sustain planet Earth, the message and messenger separated by a great gulf in tone.
As well as the painting ‘The Future Is Now’, one print of Brennan’s poster, ‘The Future Is Not What It Used to be’ is held in the Art and Heritage Collection.
