Peak Whale Oil
Sawtooth ARI
Invermay, Launceston, lutruwita

Grace Connors, Chantelle Mitchell, Nadège Philippe-Janon, Jack Wansbrough, and Jaxon Waterhouse
_{curated by Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse}

Peak Whale Oil is a group exhibition of new work investigating whaling industries and surfeits of whale oil produced in Australia throughout the 1800s through a contemporary petrocultural lens. Through material investigation, Peak Whale Oil posits a synchronicity between geologic and marine resource extraction. Working from a historical locatedness toward speculative future, Peak Whale Oil draws terrestrial and aquatic equivalences between peaks of petroleum and the continual unfurling of ‘peak oil’ discourse, as read diffractively through the past pursuit and persecution of cetacean bodies.