Redux
Sullivan and Strumpf
Sydney 2007

There’s a slight problem when looking back on the writings of the visionary British author J.G. Ballard. Way back in 1990, well before the term ‘global warming’ was coined, he was describing it in riveting detail. His novel Hello America describes a continent gone awry, a depopulated New York that is buried in dry sand and a Los Angeles that is covered in fecund tropical growth: “A desert sea had flowed through Manhattan and congealed around these huge towers. The

ravages of a century’s hostile climate had split the Appalachians and sprung this ransom from their hidden lodes.”

This could well be the world that Kate Shaw has decided to paint, a world where ice caps float down the Hudson and tropical vines infest downtown LA. While these paintings are stunningly beautiful fictions, one cannot help but be reminded of the very real rate of environmental degradation we are currently witnessing. 

Catalogue essay, Ashley Crawford 2007

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