Cloud Studies is the first solo exhibition in Australia by Forensic Architecture, a research agency comprised of architects, artists, filmmakers, journalists, scientists, lawyers and other specialists who undertake investigations into human rights abuses, state violence and environmental crimes around the world.
Using the disciplinary tools of both architecture and forensics, Forensic Architecture have given rise to a new form of investigative practice that seeks to uncover, analyse and present evidence from the crimes of our recent past and consider the convergence of architecture, media, and violence.
In Cloud Studies, Forensic Architecture contend with the interconnectedness of global atmospheres. The work brings together eight recent investigations under a single theme; toxic clouds. In a year of bushfire, pandemic and protest, where toxic clouds colonise the air we breathe and shape the way we connect, Cloud Studies presents evidence of perseverance and resistance.
As Forensic Architecture explains:
Tear gas is used to disperse bodies gathering in democratic protest, white phosphorus and chlorine gas are used to spread terror in cities, herbicide is sprayed from airplanes to destroy fields and displace those whose livelihood depends on them, arson is used to eradicate forests for industrial plantations. Mobilized by state and corporate powers, toxic clouds colonize the air we breathe across different scales and durations, from urban squares to continents and from incidents to epochal latencies.
About the artists
Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research agency, based at Goldsmiths, University of London, investigating human rights violations including violence committed by states, police forces, militaries, and corporations. FA works in partnership with institutions across civil society, from grassroots activists, to legal teams, to international NGOs and media organisations, to carry out investigations with and on behalf of communities and individuals affected by conflict, police brutality, border regimes and environmental violence.
Exhibition catalogue
Responses to the Cloud explores the themes of Cloud Studies from a local context, with new writing by Joel Spring, Saba Bebawi, Jason De Santolo, Tom Melick, Nikki Lam, Thalia Anthony, Micaela Sahhar and curators Stella Rosa McDonald and Eleanor Zeichner.
Design by Daryl Prondoso.
Gallery directions
UTS Gallery
Level 4, Peter Johnson Building (Building 6)
702 Harris St, Ultimo,
University of Technology, Sydney