Radical Hope: The Charge that Binds

The Charge That Binds

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)

7 December 2024 – 16 March 2025

I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that hope is a hard sell right now. I feel a constant, low-lying anxiety that we’re a hair’s breadth away from total social and climate collapse and ‘the end times.’ In the weeks I spent writing this, Los Angeles was on fire; Palestine was on fire, still, after over a year of live-streamed genocide at the hands of Israel; convicted felon Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States of America, again; and at his inauguration began dissolving the rights of migrants and trans people, while Elon Musk casually threw a Sieg Heil on live television. In our own country, we’re no stranger to extreme climate events; we’re also inching closer to an election where it’s likely, our own Temu Trump, Peter Dutton, will win; the right to an abortion and the rights of trans children are being threatened in Queensland; economic disparity is growing; the cost of living is rising; and our government continues to perpetuate settler colonial crimes against Australia’s First Nations people, affirming the recent referendum’s ‘No’ vote result. Fascism looms large everywhere.

I came to The Charge that Binds, the current exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) feeling exhausted and hopeless. In times like this, it can be hard to hold onto art’s significance in the broader scheme of things and easy to dismiss it as unimportant or trivial even. I don’t believe that art has the capacity to evoke social change en masse — that feels too lofty a claim, and amongst other things, social media has too far divided us and diminished our capacity for critical thought — however I do believe that when we are truly present in the gallery or engaged in dialogue there, art has the capacity  to expose us to different ideas, phenomena, histories and lived experiences that might shift or at least evoke critical reflection on our perceptions of the quotidian. It’s slow work, but powerful nonetheless. Rather than simply addressing climate change, it is this slow work that The Charge that Binds deals with, bringing vast and overlapping worlds into the gallery and carving out space for multiple voices to be heard in tandem.

I disagree with Dean Kissick’s recent assertions in the now viral article, The Painted Protest, that identity politics has defanged or ‘ruined’ contemporary art.¹ I would argue instead that it’s the role of the curator, in our present moment of censorship, climate emergency and diminished autonomy, to open the public gallery to stories and ideas that challenge dominant narratives and to provide space and a platform for the historically marginalised voices of the global majority. Who it’s worth noting, are worst affected by climate change and the post-capitalist hellscape we find ourselves in. To label this practice as trafficking solely in identity politics is reductive and intentionally misses the point. There is a difference between curating as space-making and the weaponisation of buzzwords like diversity and inclusion to signal virtue or in place of effecting structural change. This mode of curating as space-making is increasingly important and is one that ACCA’s curatorial team, in the last five years particularly, has pursued with rigour via the regular dispersal of curatorial authority and by deferring to First Nations voices. It should also be viewed as a conscious structural shift on behalf of this organisation.

The Charge that Binds speaks to this and features works by Alicia Frankovich, Brett Graham, Climate Aware Creative Practices Network, Emilija Škarnulytė, Francis Carmody, Izabela Pluta, Jack Green, Megan Cope and Brooke Wandin, Mel O’Callaghan, Sorawit Songsataya, Tita Salina and Irwan Ahmett, and Zheng Bo. This exhibition traverses mediums to present works of scale and immerse audiences in installations that centre the natural and more-than-human as a means of proposing alternative modes of relationality and connection than those imposed on us by late-stage capitalism, or (if you’re of the same vein of thought as me) technofeudalism.²  This is underscored by the understanding that our present social and climate issues are directly and inextricably linked to the ongoing processes of colonisation and its extractivism.

Whilst it’s impossible to survey the entirety of this show’s content in any depth in a piece of this length, I want to focus briefly on three works that really struck me and that when viewed together, both connect the individual to the local and planetary, and draw a clear throughline from the processes of colonisation to climate change and our present socio-political climate. For a long time, Alicia Frankovich’s sculpture and performance practice has been grounded in a posthumanist approach that is heavily influenced by Rosi Braidotti’s theory of Affirmative Ethics and in recent years has turned its attention to interrogating capitalism’s successor, technofeudalism.³ Frankovich’s sculptural installation, Feather starshade, 2024, continues in this conceptual vein. Resembling an inverted tropical flower with golden petals and protruding pink and orange filaments, Feather starshade is a model of a NASA starshade to which FDM 3D prints have been attached. These prints are supposed to reference a Crinoid or feather star — an ancient marine creature — for the purpose of marrying the human with the non-human world. In this way, Frankovich critiques the separatist thinking of tech companies like Tesla, who plan to deplete this planet of its natural resources before moving outer space to colonise another. Instead, Frankovich proffers interspecies entanglements as an alternative, challenging us to acknowledge our interdependence and to be accountable to our planet and its other inhabitants. Feather starshade also makes us cognisant, almost to comedic effect, how far removed any dreams of another world are for ordinary folks. Most of us aren’t going to Mars, that’s billionaire territory only. 

Like Frankovich, Francis Carmody has shown himself to have an uncanny ability to translate colossal subject matter, including the systems that underpin contemporary existence into concise and compelling conceptual works. Carmody’s contribution to The Charge that Binds, Laschamp cycles: Aurora 12024 and Laschamp cycles: Aurora 112024 are two large ceiling-hung mobiles that resemble augmented lilies or pea tendrils with their white and green, curved and snaking limbs. Graceful in their form and subtle in their movement, backlit and set against a black background, these mobiles reference both the Laschamp magnetic reversal event and Gregor Mendel’s 1800s genetic experiments on pea plants which were supposedly capable of sensing magnetic fields.⁴ Literally and figuratively suspended in space, spiralling one direction then another, these works examine the capacity of shifts in the Earth's magnetic field to trigger genetic mutations and highlight just how little we know about the ways unseen planetary forces impact genetic inheritance and biological adaptation. This in turn, asks us to further consider our relationship to forces that are beyond the scope of human control, as well as the impact that our own actions will have on future generations. As is standard with sculptural objects, I found myself transfixed by these mobiles and contemplating my body in relation to them. This allowed me to briefly zoom out from the minutiae of the everyday, to consider some of the bigger questions of our times — what unseen forces might already be affecting me and the world around me, and how might my children inherit the impacts? 

Quandamooka (Minjerribah/Stradbroke Island) artist, Megan Cope and Wurundjeri educator, language worker and artist, Brooke Wandin’s works in The Charge that Binds similarly creates an understanding via proximity and by situating you within their context. Copes' practice centres on the relationship between place and Indigenous knowledge and identity, while Wandin’s focuses on the revival of Woiwurrung language. Wandin and Cope’s collaborative installation biiknganjinu ngangudji - see our Country, 2023, is paired with two works by Wandin, biiknganjinu ngangudji - hear our Country, 2023, and Mapping Coranderrk no.1, 1863-2024. biiknganjinu ngangudji - see our Country, is a yellow ochre illustration that encircles the top third of four walls in ACCA’s first gallery and mirrors the horizon line it depicts — 360-degree drone footage of wurundjeri biik (Wurundjeri Country) taken from View Hill. This illustration documents the networks of mountain ranges connecting Kulin Nations here.

To experience this work, audiences must immerse themselves in Wandin’s biiknganjinu ngangudji - hear our Country, a sound work in which Woiwurrung place names, traversing Wurundjeri Country, are spoken aloud by Community members. Beneath biiknganjinu ngangudji - see our Country and surrounded by biiknganjinu ngangudji - hear our Country, audiences come into proximity with Wandin’s Mapping Coranderrk no.1, a series of maps drawn in ‘Coranderrk Yellow’ (the same yellow used by Cope above) and hung like nation flags from short wooden poles, protruding from the gallery wall. These maps chart the way the dimensions of Coranderrk (a former mission site) have been drawn and redrawn since 1863. Experiencing these works in combination and from a perspective of immersion evokes a palpable and deeply moving cognisance of the vast, interconnectedness of Wurundjeri Country and First Nations peoples’ connection to it. As well as an understanding of First Nations cultural continuation, the survival  of their oldest living culture despite the violent oppression of colonisation, and the central role that Country plays in this resistance. This in turn challenges the same separatist thinking — that people are distinct from the land they inhabit — that Frankovich’s work subverts and which can be said to have led us to where we now find ourselves, in the midst of climate disaster. Colonisation, techno-feudalism and climate change are afterall inextricably linked.

The works in The Charge that Binds pull us into the gargantuan and deeply profound natural world, making us conscious of the way it dwarfs us across time, is linked to our own evolution and histories, and is essential to First Nations cultural connection and continuation. But for me, the real strength of this exhibition stems from its foregrounding of a collective curatorial model, initiated by Shelley McSpedden (Senior Curator, ACCA) and composed of Associate Professor Michelle Antoinette (Art History and Theory program at Monash University), Professor Brian Martin (artist and Director of Wominjeka Djeembana Indigenous Research Lab), Professor Peta Rake (Director of University of Queensland Art Museum) and Professor Naomi Stead (Director of the Design and Creative Practice Enabling Capability Platform, RMIT University). This curatorium’s varied and intersectional expertise lends the nuance and complexity of multiple voices to the concepts explored in this exhibition, whilst simultaneously offsetting the commonly centralised authority of the curator and the hegemony of any singular ‘white expert.’ It is an act of deference and a conscious decision to give space, rather than a performance of inclusion.

This plurality and intention extends to the public programs and performances that are set to encase this exhibition from late-February, taking the form of a series of experimental workshops, conversations and pedagogical investigations that employ artistic, activist and First Nations knowledge and strategies to imagine new ways of being together and resisting our further descent into social and ecological crisis. In her essay for The Charge that Binds, Dr Bronwyn Bailey-Charteris quotes Ellen Van Neerven, ‘Fighting for climate justice is fighting neoliberalism and persuasive colonialisms, and it’s also about giving Country and those who are Country custodians a voice.’⁵ This is what The Charge that Binds is working to do and what for me separates it from the many other exhibitions centring on climate change that I’ve seen in the last couple of years. In addition to situating the audience in relation to one another, other species and the lands we inhabit, it also brings a diverse cohort of voices into conversation to explore and speculate on different ways of being and being together. It does so in a way that destabilises the authority of the institution and curator, and preferences First Nations’ perspectives and knowledge. In the face of facism and climate collapse, it is an inherently hopeful thing to see people brought together with intention and in this way, and right now that hope feels radical.

Anador Walsh is a Naarm-based curator, writer and the founding director of Performance Review. Performance Review (established 2021) is a performance art criticism and presentation platform. 

In 2020, Walsh took part in the Gertrude Emerging Writers Program and was the 2019 recipient of the BLINDSIDE Emerging Curator Mentorship. Walsh is the Curator of Contact High, Gertrude and Performance Review’s 2022-2024 performance program; and in 2022 curated the Naarm premiere of Angela Goh’s Body Loss at the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Walsh has written extensively for local and international titles including, Art Monthly Australasia, Art Guide, Runway Journal, ACCA, PICA and Taipei Performing Arts Centre. 

un Projects’ Editor-in-Residence Program is supported by the City of Yarra, Creative Victoria and City of Melbourne. Edited by Sofia Skobeleva (Sid Akhmed).