The psychology of climate control
Mining the Mind—The Psychology of Climate Control, which was shown recently at Umbrella Studio, is the initial stage of an ongoing collaborative project between Stack Art in Mt lsa and Townsville's Umbrella Studio. Thirteen artists from Mt lsa and Townsville are represented in the exhibition, in which they reveal their individual responses to producing art through the summer in North Queensland. Themes include the mine and industry; the machine and the organic; body and heat; the body and the hidden chambers or climates of the mind; and climate, place and happiness.
It is not surprising that the mine should loom so large in the work of the artists from Stack Art. It certainly has an all-pervading presence. I have not been to Mt lsa for some years now, but I do recall being overwhelmed by the sheer size of the mine. The mine or the industrial machine is a central presence in works by Ashley Bland, Anna-Ritta Ovaska and Lynda Onton-O'Shea, and the machine appears in a more appealing guise in a piece by Kevin Ang. Although most of the representations of mines or machines appear in the work of the Mt Isa artists, there is one untitled depiction of a machine by Townsville artist Thierry Auriac. It is interesting to note, however, that the machine does not appear on its own in any of these works, but rather it coexists with or forces itself upon nature and the human being.
Mining of the Mass Consciousness by Ashley Bland, who has recently worked as an environmental officer for the Mt Isa Mining Industry refers to "...a mass consciousness which connects all individuals within a contemporary environ... ". The main feature