Learning how to live with the unloved and disregarded: The common blowfish: Torquigener Pleurogramma
Author Identifier
Lyndall Adams: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4577-6609
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Feminist Responses to Climate Change: Unruly Experimentations for Unstable Times
Publisher
Edith Cowan University
School
School of Arts and Humanities
RAS ID
65856
Abstract
Research Background:
The artworks were commissioned by ECU Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow, Mindy Blaise for a curated exhibition, Feminist Responses to Climate Change: Unruly Experimentations for Unstable Times under the theme: Learning how to live with the unloved and disregarded. I was invited to respond to the Blowie (Common Blowfish and Tetraodotidae) which are often found as puffed-up carcasses on the beach or foreshore, an annoyance to anglers, or a concern for anxious dog owners and parents. In reality blowies contribute positively to marine ecosystems, keeping waterways clean by eating up waste, bait and berley.
Research Contribution:
The work of artists includes rousing inattention, revealing what is concealed, and to love the unloved. This set of drawings was my response—rendering the weeping toado’s dark vertical ‘tear’ lined cheeks, their lives underwater, the living, swimming bodies of these small, vital but underappreciated creatures was the everyday focus through many days. Drawing is the most direct, unmediated of art forms, simultaneously a material and gestural act: each mark intimately traced our bodies into the 5 drawings with regard, with love, with the simple tools of pencil on paper. “The intersections of feminist grappling in our times situates these works as unfixed and imperfect responses to a world in unjust crisis.” (Pollitt, 2021).
Research Significance:
The exhibition was well attended with 4 events including an unruly methods discussion and a round table. It was used as a case study in an international HE report illustrating trends, examples, and reflections on how educational institutes can work towards creating a more sustainable future. “The artworks set into motion new understandings and practices that extend possibilities for alternative climate futures via multispecies relations. What emerges across the artworks are a set of ethical propositions for living well together in these uncertain times” (Blaise, 2022).
Comments
Adams, L. (2021). Learning how to live with the unloved and disregarded: The common blowfish: Torquigener Pleurogramma[Exhibition]. Feminist Responses to Climate Change: Unruly Experimentations for Unstable Times. Gallery25. Mount Lawley, Western Australia. https://www.ecu.edu.au/schools/arts-and-humanities/ecu-galleries/past-exhibitions/related-content/exhibitions/2021/feminist-responses-to-climate-change