Climate Change and its devastating impact on the earth is the most pressing global issue of our time.  

Final Call presents new creative works collaboratively conceptualised and developed by six leading Queensland artists — Judy Watson, Robert Andrew, Courtney Coombs, Caitlin Franzmann, Courtney Scheu and Itamar Freed — responding to Climate Change. 

Presented amongst the stunning natural environment of Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Garden, Final Call offers a moment of reflection and hope in the face of environmental crisis. 

Dive deep into the artists’ creative process through an innovative digital experience with a 360 degree view of each work, artist interviews and intriguing insights on the project. 

OFFICIAL OPENING AND TOUR 

Join us at the Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Garden for the official opening of Final Call, where you’ll get to Walk + Talk with the artists and curator Megan Williams as they guide you through the exhibition.  

Date: Sat 28 Aug 
Time: 9am 
Location: Maroochy Regional Bushland Botanic Garden — meet at the Arts and Ecology Centre. 

FINAL CALL KIDS 

Explore Final Call with the little people in your life and then head into Final Call Kids, a dedicated kids creative space with a series of climate science related activities and installations created by featured artist Caitlin Franzmann.  

FEATURED ARTISTS 

Robert Andrew 
Robert Andrew is a decedent of the Yawuru people from the Broome area in the Kimberley, Western Australia, and also has European and Filipino heritage. Robert’s work investigates denied and forgotten histories by combining programmable machinery with natural materials that erode and create residues over time. 

Courtney Coombs  
Courtney Coombs makes art, writes, facilitates and collaborates to make sense of the world and their place in it. They are fascinated by the potential for, and power of, connection and disconnection and explore this by re-imagining every-day and seemingly banal moments of encounter. Employing a queer methodology, their work adopts an array of materials and approaches, presenting subjective, vulnerable, and earnest moments, often by way of metaphor, to prompt different ways of seeing, understanding and being. Suspicious of the spectacle, Courtney offers gestural propositions with the hope of disrupting dominant narratives about value, prompting instead, moments of reflection, connection, and a celebration of difference.

Caitlin Franzmann 
Caitlin Franzmann explores contemporary art’s potential to instigate change by way of critical listening, dialogue and self-empowerment. In reaction to the fast pace and sensory overstimulation of contemporary urban life, she creates situations to encourage slowness, mindful contemplation, and social interaction in both galleries and public spaces.

Itamar Freed and Courtney Scheu 
Itamar Freed and Courtney Scheu are interdisciplinary artists who collaborate and create work in response to environment and place. Across forms of dance, sculpture, video and photography they explore distinctions between the natural and artificial, and the real and manufactured. 

Judy Watson 
Judy Watson’s matrilineal family is from Waanyi country in north-west Queensland. Working across printmaking, painting, drawing and video her work often examines collective memory and employs archival material and research as a way to reveal institutional discrimination against Aboriginal people.   

 DIGITAL EXPERIENCE 

During the festival, you'll be able to take a digital wander through the Gardens and dive deep into the artists’ creative processes, their works and what climate change means to them through interviews and 360 degree video. 

CREDITS 

Curated by Megan Williams, Manager of USC Art Gallery. 
Photos and video by Tim Birch.