ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 is a Melbourne area festival of climate change related arts and ideas that will include 25 curated exhibitions alongside a series of keynote lectures and public forums featuring local and international guests. ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2015 will be staged in Melbourne from 11 April to 17 May, with further participation from museums and galleries located in greater Melbourne and regional Victoria. Art, culture, and environment are areas of contemporary intersection, generating exciting explorations of aesthetic ideas and creative thinking concerning the environmental conundrums of the 21st Century. These stimulating events will attract a broad audience and provide a clear space for the discussion of the challenges and opportunities, impacts and solutions, arising from climate change. Among the events:

• The Maldives Exodus Caravan Show is curated by Danish artist Søren Dahlgaard with deputy curators Elena Gilbert & Microclima. This international group exhibition promotes themes of environmental awareness and climate change with non-physical artworks such as art videos, performance, music and games.  The exhibition includes works by artists from Netherlands, New Zealand, Finland, Thailand and elsewhere. Søren Dahlgaard is currently PhD Candidate at VCA, Victorian College of the Arts at The University of Melbourne. His research project is titled: Art as a tool for environmental regeneration and will work with a forest garden in a public park in Melbourne over the next 3 years.
• Keynote Lecture: David Buckland (UK), Artistic Director and Founder Cape Farewell: David Buckland will narrate 14 years of Cape Farewell’s ambition to place climate centre stage. Using the notion of expedition as a model to interrogate the future, Buckland will showcase some of the art produced by over 320 artists who have risen to the climate challenge; and visioned, through their creative endeavour, why we must engage in building transformative, dynamic and sustainable societies.

• Discounting the Future exhibition surveys a decade of artworks created by David Buckland for the Cape Farewell (UK-based) project, reinforcing the message that Climate is Culture.
• Japanese Art after Fukushima exhibition explores the potent image of Godzilla and his anti-nuclear subtext which again forces people to question nuclear power.