Annique Goldenberg.
Constellations
The Loft at QUT Kelvin Grove
Artist Statement
Extreme weather events such as floods are on the increase and yet we are not hearing the urgency of the need for change. The young are calling my generation to account: to listen to, hear to see and to act.
This video and soundtrack are central to the installation piece ‘Called to account”. Consisting of a video of a woman signing with a barely audible soundtrack we are witnessing an Auslan translation of Greta Thunberg’s 2018 speech to the UN COP24 Climate Change Conference. In its original iteration in 2019 the projection was small and intimate floating on the surface of a small tank of water and mud collected from the 2017 Lismore flood. The viewer was drawn in by the gestures and facial expressions reflected into and on the water struggling to understand what she was communicating. In this 2024 iteration the woman is now larger than life calling for our attention. Barely audible is a girl’s voice Greta’s voice where she calls us to account in her iconic speech. Are we listening yet?
About the artists
Nearing the end of her Doctorate of Visual Art at Queensland College of Art and Design Annique Goldenberg works with water as material and metaphor for experiencing our interconnected relationship with water. Her final work “LIVING WATER: the ocean stretched” has traveled full circle from the recent Lismore floods back to the High Arctic where she began her research sailing in the archipelago of Svalbard. Having spent many years of her life aboard yachts sailing various oceans her respect runs deep for this transformative and embodied element. Her Companion Thinker. Goldenberg lives and works on the unceded lands of the Arakwal and Bundjalung people in the Bundjalung Nation and the Jagera and Turrbal people in Meanjin and pays her respects to their elders.
Credits: Artist Annique Goldenberg Projection video © Annique Goldenberg 2019 Auslan translation and signing: Janelle Whalan Audio: Greta Thunberg. “UNFCCC secretariat” ©UNFCCC 2018. UNFCCC audiovisual material reproduced with the permission of the UNFCCC secretariat such permission not amounting to an endorsement by the UNFCCC secretariat of the views expressed in this production.”