Current

29 June - 31 July 2026

Pam McKinlay: Time Once Upon Us

time once upon us by Pam McKinlay is an ongoing project which entwines climate data, weaving and light and sensing technologies to make planetary change materially visible.

In a world shaped by warming oceans and destabilising cryospheric systems, these works return again and again to a simple question: how do we sense what is changing slowly, almost beyond perception, and yet reshapes everything?

Developed through multiple Art+Science projects, the current installation opens spaces where viewing becomes an invitation to conversation. In an age saturated with data, time once upon us seeks to art-iculate complexity – translating datasets into tactile hand woven panels and visual forms that hold scientific knowledge.

The scene is set along the bottom with a timeline starting in 1912 when the Rodney and Otamatea Times in the far North published a "Science Note" about carbon emissions, an early herald of global warming. Tying the events to the timeline is a
bar graph of global temperature rises from 1850–2022, alongside a graphic of the stripes annotated by year.

Holding the back wall are hand-woven panels derived from the climate graphics created by climate scientist Ed Hawkins. The #ShowYourStripes datasets compress more than a century of temperature changes into timebands of blues and reds. In 2026 a new deeper red was added to the last strip to reflect the next four hottest years on record and rising.

The LED panel links emissions to the melting ice, rising seas and shifting ecologies, with Antarctica as a recurring threshold in the Southern hemisphere. This pulsing LED lightwork was developed in conversation with GNS Science which looked at sea-level rise in a scenario using RCP data and interactive mapping. Emergen(t) Seas reveals Antarctica as an archipelago emerging through ice melt at 2.6°C warming, at the turn of next century. If one traces the edge of the Southern Ocean in
the etched image towards Australia and New Zealand, pressing questions emerge. The title gathers emergency, emergence and our ocean into a single unstable idea, where we forsee future waters arriving at our shores.

Situated in Ōtepoti/Dunedin and Aotearoa New Zealand, the Art+Science project is convened by Pam McKinlay. It acknowledges Indigenous and colonial histories and recognises mana whenua – Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Waitaha – within ongoing bicultural dialogue. These works explore ways to remain present within change and imagine what is still possible.

Hope is not a fixed state, but an urgent openness to change and a mode of staying with the trouble.

Acknowledgements: Co-makers in the LED lightbox work were: Pam McKinlay (designer and laser etching), Belinda Smith Lyttle (cartography), Henry Greenslade (electronics), and Leonora DaVinci (joinery).

Pam McKinlay (Tangata Tiriti) has a background in applied science and history of art. As an artist, she works in collaboration with other artists locally and nationally, in community outreach and education projects around the theme of climate change, sustainability and biodiversity. She is an independent curator and convenor of the Art+Science Project based in Ōtepoti Dunedin, New Zealand. McKinlay has exhibited regularly in the Art+Science Project and touring exhibitions as well as New Zealand International Science Festival and New Zealand Festival of Naure. She has been shortlisted four times as a finalist in the New Zealand Contemporary Textile Arts Awards.

Time Once Upon Us is part of the NZ International Science Festival 2026 Nano Fest. Here's a link to the event listing in the festival's programme. 

For more about Pam McKinlay's work, see Flows Like Water, now available as an ebook at mebooks.nz.

 

 

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