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Tuesday, May 24, 2022

100 Year Climate Yarn Project

It's a rare day when I post twice on this blog - but there is no point in holding this one over for another day.

Today I visited Sandy Lepore's 100 Year Climate Yarn Project at the Adelaide City Library. I knew a bit about the project and had been following it's recent progress online. I had seen quite a few of Grant Hancock's excellent photographs but the reality is something else again.   

The sheer size and ambition of it was evident from the excellent publicity photos, but the texture less  so.  The evenness of the stitches, the raised dividing lines between years, the vibrancy of the colours and precision of the design just blew me away when face to face with the real thing. 


I was wearing a mask so have severely cropped my unflattering attempted selfie which does, at least, give a glimpse of the scale of the project.





The work is really well and accessibly displayed in the library with an excellent board of background and explanatory information. 

In addition to the huge impact of the month by month colour-coded temperature representation of 100 years of Adelaide temperatures, a band across the bottom of the piece shows year by year averages, almost like piano keys. 







As suggested in the display, as well as tracking temperature shifts across their whole life, visitors can trace the temperature on their life events. The circle on this photo, for example, marks my wedding day, which, surprisingly, was slightly below the mean in Adelaide. In Sydney, where we married, it was overcast, hot and humid, almost certainly above the Sydney mean. 

There are no end of  conversations, ideas and stories that can be generated from a visit.

Sandy, her climate expert Heather Smith, photographer Grant Hancock and the enabling library staff have done a brilliant job.  I really hope their plans for the exhibition to tour other parts of the country come to fruition so more of you can get to see it. 

Should you get the chance don't miss it.

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