WEATHER COLLECTION

Weather Collection is a series of online projects including storytelling events, digital exhibitions and artist projects, combined with in-person exhibitions and hands-on art-making, that invite people across Canada to build new relationships with the future of our planet. The series arises from a long-term research partnership between artist Lisa Hirmer and uLethbridge Art Gallery that focuses on creating a sense of possibility in response to the climate crisis. The Weather Collection series aims to work with the specific property of visual art to spark the imagination in order to open up new perspectives on our environment and support productive possibilities for the future.

Weather Collection is deliberately eclectic. Recognizing that existing approaches are not working to address the climate crisis, the series consists of novel combinations that encourage people to find new possibilities and ways of working together to change the future. The in-person and digital exhibitions include a mix of new work by contemporary artists and works from the extensive collections of the partner galleries selected for the stories they can tell about human relationships with weather. The partner galleries have selected emerging artists to be mentored within the project and produce new artworks that will be featured here, on the project’s website. The online storytelling events, titled Weather Stories, are organized by artist Lisa Hirmer and will bring together scientists, Indigenous Elders, artists, poets, gardeners, activists and others from diverse backgrounds to tell tales about their experiences of weather in this era of climate change.