Last Saturday, I stopped by Gallery 101 for the opening vernissage of Lisa Hirmer’s exhibition The Atmosphere is Always Still Being Made.
A thought-provoking and beautifully presented show exploring our relationship with the environment.
About the exhibition:
The Atmosphere is Always Still Being Made explores the atmospheric quality of contemporary life: the atmosphere being both a material fact of life on this planet and a strange, new awareness ushered in by climate change. The atmosphere is at once the thick layer of gas that surrounds the planet and makes life possible, everything that is beyond and between us and all beings, and something entering and leaving our bodies with each breath. It is also a place so profoundly altered by our carbon-fuelled civilization that livability as we know it is at risk.
The photo-based work in this exhibition explores the feeling of living inside this realm of unbounded exchange, where actions cannot be contained but are instead drifting and ever-accumulating, suggesting profound social and political implications for how we, climate-altering humans, live on this planet where the atmosphere puts us into relationship with all things. At the same time, the works in The Atmosphere is Always Still Being Made try to make sense of the embodied experiences of living within climate change, where a constant awareness of our rapidly changing planet colours our daily experiences of life, weather, and especially seasonal change.
The exhibition runs until December 6, 2025.
Lisa Hirmer’s The Atmosphere is Always Still Being Made @ Gallery 101
