A Fossilised Future, has been reviewed by Sam Leach in The Article.
Fossil: A slow acting violence, curated by Felicity Spear, now showing at Stephen Mclaughlan Gallery has been reviewed by Sam Leach in The Article.
Below is a snippet of the review.
“The difference between geological and biological time is a question of scale so vast it becomes sublime: the mind cannot really grasp the immensity. And yet, we know that our actions have consequences at both scales. Debbie Symons’ work, Limacina Helicina Antarctica – the Butterfly Effect, refers to the well-known concept in chaos theory, which has by now become a metaphor to describe any unforeseeable large-scale consequence from a small action. In Symons’ work an Antarctic sea butterfly flaps its wing-like appendages in a dark sea while viscous blobs seem to run across the screen surface. It is not difficult to imagine that a small invertebrate in the Arctic would be under some ecological pressure caused by human activity. This weird little animal, resembling a fanciful illustration of an ancient ammonite is being affected by our activity. In fact, specifically the viewer’s activity. We are doing something to it. We are complicit in a form of incremental violence and we often feel powerless to stop it. These crustacea are struggling to produce their shells due to ocean acidification, disrupting the pelagic fishes’ food source and thereby all other creatures in that trophic cascade. Somehow my decision to take the electric lift to this gallery, rather than walk the many flights of stairs, is going to have an impact. Maybe the little snail will flap its fins a bit faster, or a bit less. And that will be the beginning of a cascade of actions as unpredictable as the path followed by the gobs of viscous liquid in this video.”
Read the entire review at The Article