Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger
Beyond the Bucket List
NRCG - Northern Rivers Community Gallery 44 Cherry St, Ballina NSW
May 4 to June 26, 2022
Antarctica, the iconic landscape on many a travellers' Bucket List' is the focus of this exhibition by Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger as she considers how contemporary consumer culture, through tourism and the 'Bucket List' impacts this remote location. Travelling in February 2017 on a 16m sailing boat resulted in a limited but eye-opening examination of one of the most visited tourist locations in Antarctica, Deception Island.
Lea's interdisciplinary vision examines the juxtaposition between wanting to preserve an environmentally critical ecosystem and the traveller's desire to go and explore such sensitive areas.
This exhibition is not just an examination of place; it is an examination of humanity's impact by our physical presence and from a distance...
In her series Livingston I Presume, Kannar-Lichtenberger considers the first vision of these places through the telescope; this beauty belies the future of exploitation that ultimately follows our presence.
From a distance, we can see our effect, Deception I Berlin takes the streets of Berlin and projects it onto a melting glacier on Deception Island, a glacier which Dissipation allows you to consider.
Sadly, ocean debris, now part of this place, is examined in Gagged and Unhappy Feet; they aim to disturb the viewer with how ocean debris impacts all living creatures.
Regarding these artworks, Dr Jan Guy comments; 'Social change does not only come about through violent revolution but through quiet ripples of awareness and conversation. The work of Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger contributes to these ripples by presenting us with images of beauty bound to visceral shocks of realisation.'