Peak Whale Oil is an exhibition of work by Chantelle Mitchell, Jaxon Waterhouse, Grace Connors, Jack Wansbrough and Nadège Philippe-Janon, investigating the history of Australian whaling through a contemporary petrocultural lens. This exhibition has been presented in a Tasmanian context, hosted by Sawtooth ARI, and this iteration seeks to present new figurations of work in responsiveness to the West Australian whaling and extraction histories and industries.

Through installation, sound, video and scent, 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.

Chantelle Mitchell and Jaxon Waterhouse, through their project Ecological Gyre Theory have presented exhibition and performance lecture deluge, for Sawtooth ARI and have work appearing in Art+Australia, e-flux journal, On_Culture and Unlikely, among others.

Chantelle is a writer/curator. She has written for The Lifted Brow, Plumwood Mountain Journal, Marrickville Pause and others, and presented performance lectures for ACCA, the Ian Potter Museum of Art and Bus Projects. Jaxon is a writer/publisher. He maintains a research based arts practice which has seen him exhibit across Australia, most recently in SBTS 2020.

Grace Connors is an artist living in Boorloo (Perth, WA). Her practice draws from posthumanist studies to look critically toward systems of control, our relationships to technology and to each other. She has exhibited across Australia since 2013, and curated exhibitions for Hobiennale (TAS) in 2017 and Unhallowed Arts Festival (WA) in 2018.

Jack Wansbrough is an artist living in Boorloo (Perth, WA). Working collaboratively, he has made works of research and fiction for art spaces, radio and text. Recently, he was the artist in residence at Heathcote Cultural Precinct, and in 2019 he participated in the Critical Animals creative research symposium and Radiophrenia Glasgow.

Nadège Philippe-Janon is an artist based in nipaluna/Hobart. She often critiques anthropocentric relations with the more-than-human world while straddling the intersections of science, nature, culture and personal narrative. Past projects have included responsive multi-media installations, harnessing the sun’s radiant heat to melt metals, attempting more-than-human perspectives via sexting, and casting off on the Tasman Sea in a handmade boat.