Warm Summers
Sam Schmitt
14 June 2019
6-9pm (one day only event)
The Change Room
A flooded bathroom. The feeling of bare feet walking through the floating weeds, soaked and stained. Little invasions of species that find themselves pulled out of context.
The delightful power of choice to take the climate crisis out of context, before it invades our spaces further and not at all by choice. Coming to terms with that now, learning to adapt to the weather we force on ourselves is the only way we can grow.Working with evoking pleasure from the natural, highlighting its resilience in the face of everything we do to it, how it adapts and invades our spaces, the artist is describing an adaptability and resilience. The virility of certain species and their ability to thrive in the most unexpected locations highlights the poetic power of that ability when experienced through something other than our computers.
The installation contains labour-intensive textiles, precious to the artist, but abused nonetheless. Their change and loss isn't yet something we all know much about. Dramatic and overwrought emotion are the only tools left with which to erode our careful expectations of safety.
Booklet handout (*interview with artist Sam Schmitt enclosed)
About the artist
Sam Schmitt (b. 1990, Toronto) is a Canadian artist that grew up between city and country. His work in image and installation addresses the perceptual blindness we bring to the problems as vast as the climate crisis, and hopes to create immersive personal connections to the ecological processes that sustain our lives.
