We invite you to join On Fire: Climate & Crisis curator Tim Riley Walsh to celebrate the launch of the accompanying publication followed by a panel discussion titled Architecture and Design in the Pyrocene.
The publication features newly commissioned texts from Amelia Barikin, Shannon Brett, Chari Larsson, Kevin O’Brien, Rachel O’Reilly, and Tim Riley Walsh. Contextualising the exhibition and the work of its fifteen featured artists, this publication looks to the past, present, and future via colonialism’s legacies, fire’s cultural relativity, and art’s insights in a troubled era.
A panel discussion will address the emergence of what fire historian Stephen Pyne calls the Pyrocene—the fire equivalent of an ice age—and how Queensland architecture and design face a critical moment of reflection. How should buildings function and act in an era defined by overlapping crises?
This discussion calls into question the colonial legacy of permanent settlement in the present, in a moral, legal, and practical sense, particularly as an increasingly volatile environment emphasises a need for impermanent and decolonised modes of living.
Join transdisciplinary design academic Liz Brogden, art historian Andrew McNamara, architect/academic Kevin O’Brien, and panel host Susan Best, to discuss: should our future buildings and cities be fire-resistant, -resilient, or -accepting?
Submit your questions for the panellists prior to the event via ima@ima.org.au
RSVP essential. Register via the link above.
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Liz Brogden is a Lecturer in Transdisciplinary Design with a background in Architecture at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research focuses on innovative pedagogy and curriculum design to support the integration of sustainable development, climate change adaptation and disaster resilience within design education.
Andrew McNamara teaches art history and theory in Visual Arts at QUT. He is also the curator of the Bauhaus Now exhibition at the Museum of Brisbane. Amongst many other publications, McNamara was the editor of Sweat: The Subtropical Imaginary (Institute of Modern Art, 2011).
Kevin O’Brien is a Principal at BVN, and Adjunct Professor in Architecture at the University of Sydney. Kevin is co-editor of the ‘Our Voices’ publications by Oro Editions (2018, 2021) drawn exclusively from international First Nation perspectives. The writings engage with the relationships between cultural, political, built and un-built environments.
Susan Best is Professor of Fine Art and Theory at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Brisbane, and a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Best’s publications include Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde (2011), Reparative Aesthetics: Witnessing in Contemporary Art Photography (2016), and It’s Not Personal: Post 60s Body Art and Performance (forthcoming). Best was a contributor to Sweat: The Subtropical Imaginary (Institute of Modern Art, 2011).
Anne Wallace, 'Fire in the Hills', 2019, oil on linen, 61.4 x 92 cm. Collection of Philip Leeson and Lee Erickson, Canberra. Courtesy of the artist and Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney.
