Peak Whale Oil

12th November - 21st December 2021

Peak Whale Oil

“Peak Whale Oil is a group exhibition of new work by Ecological Gyre (Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse), Grace Connors, Jack Wansbrough and Nadège Philippe-Janon. The Artists investigate the history of the Tasmanian whaling industry and surfeits of whale oil produced in Hobart throughout the 1800s through a contemporary petrocultural lens. Through installation, sound, video and scent, Peak Whale Oil posits a synchronicity between geologic and marine resource extraction. Working from a historical locatedness toward speculative future, Peak Whale Oil draws terrestrial and aquatic equivalences between peaks of petroleum and the continual unfurling of ‘peak oil’ discourse, as read diffractively through the past pursuit and persecution of cetacean bodies.”

Image Credit: Grand Ball Given by the Whales, Vanity Fair, April 20, 1861.