10 Degrees Hotter

10 Degrees Hotter was almost the name of this gallery but we couldn’t all agree. Some thought it sounded like a boy band, others thought it was a mouthful. The phrase came out of a way of describing the conditions of being in Western Sydney— on any regular summer day, it can be five to ten degrees hotter in the west compared to out east. This artificial climate is created by the urban heat island effect, where hot air gets trapped in the vast concrete expanse between the mountains and the coast. Not to trivialise the real implications of this effect in the face of climate change, we saw this heat bubble as a metaphor for the energy that emerges out of the western suburbs and Pari as a way of keeping it here. 10 Degrees Hotter became a way to express our affection for the west and all that entails.

Extending from the title, the works in this exhibition incorporate references to heat in some way — whether it be climate, cooking, smoking or burning.