International Airspace, 2019
(Picture: David Rickard)This exhibition is about the politics of air, and especially what it can tell us about the health of our planet and different communities of people who inhabit it. It was planned before the pandemic, and while Covid undoubtedly provides a topical context, it’s not a coronavirus show: the climate emergency and air pollution are the key themes.
It begins smartly with two introductory works that frame the realities and mythologies around the invisible substance that surrounds us. Tacita Dean’s A Bag of Air (1995) is a delightful vignette of a film, in which, over images of a hot air balloon silhouetted against the earth and a scientist’s hand capturing air in a plastic bag, the artist tells us about alchemical notions that suggested you could fill a bag “so intoxicated with the essence of spring that when it is distilled and prepared, it will produce an oil of gold, remedy enough to heal all ailments”.
