Julius von Bismarck: This is not the storm at ACCA

This autumn, ACCA presents the first Australian solo exhibition by Julius von Bismarck, the award-winning German artist whose ambitious works have seen him scale mountains, chase lightning bolts, and venture into the thick of hurricanes and wildfires.

Free to enter, This is not the storm spans more than two decades of his career, bringing together works that combine scientific curiosity, technical virtuosity and keen interest in nature, across kinetic sculpture, photography, and immersive video installations.

A major new spatial installation anchors the exhibition, occupying ACCA’s main gallery. Suspended geological forms and monumental heads move in formation, propelled by motors and governed by mathematical precision.

Elsewhere, Joe is dead (2016), co-produced with Julian Charrière and Felix Kiessling, presents a tumbleweed caught in an endless loop along a conveyor belt. It is shown alongside the photographic series I Am Afraid I Must Ask You To Leave (2018), which depicts staged detonations of natural monuments in US national parks, paired with news coverage of the events.

The immersive video installation Geh aus mein Herz! (Go forth, my heart!) (2023) brings viewers into a shifting landscape of treetops, grasses and terrain set in motion by air currents. Accompanied by a choral score, the work suggests the singers’ breath is animating the environment itself.

Curated by ACCA’s senior curator and head of exhibitions, Dr Shelley McSpedden, This is not the storm includes works never before seen in Australia. It invites audiences to reconsider their relationship to the environments they inhabit, and the limits of human control within them.

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