Anna Madeleine Raupach, Slow Violence (Mallacoota), 2022. Embroidery thread on emergency blanket, 130 x 200cm. Courtesy: the artist and Galerie pompom, Sydney.

The works in Too Late to Leave are informed by material investigation of maps, data and communication related to climate change. The exhibition explores how interpretation of extreme weather events, both through measurement systems and human understanding and expression, are continuously recalibrated to adapt to the changing environment.

The Slow Violence series consists of large-scale maps of the 2019/2020 bushfires in the Blue Mountains, NSW South Coast, Namadgi National Park, and Eastern Victoria, embroidered into emergency thermal blankets. These pieces re-interpret satellite data representing fire damage through hand-stitching that simultaneously destroys and repairs its grounding substrate. Designed to retain body heat and as a potential signalling device, the thermal blanket conveys fire as both restorative and catastrophic.

The term ‘slow violence’ refers to implications of climate change that are temporally and spatially removed from sites of immediate destruction. This is echoed in the accompanying video works, where satellite footage of bushfire smoke encircling the earth is reanimated using UV cyanotype exposures, and images from below this same summer sky are chronicled in daily samples compiled on social media.

Through a tactile exploration of temporality and scale, these works interweave personal experience and planetary forces to express a crisis both urgently present and crucially delayed.

Opening night Wednesday 16 March 6-8pm

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