A Variability Quantifier

Liam Gillick’s process in building a functioning weather station for Fogo Island, Newfoundland.

A Variability Quantifier is an artwork intended to function as an operational weather station. Located on Fogo Island to the north of Newfoundland, it gathers local weather data and is a place for education, reflection, and discussion. A year after the installation of the work Liam Gillick returned to Fogo to make a documentary film about his work. This resulted in two separate films that make use of the same footage. In Variability Quantified we hear Nobel Prize winning climatologist Syukuro Manabe explaining the science of global heating and his pioneering work modeling earth’s climate in the 1960s. In Quantified Variability the artist dramatically altered the natural colors in the footage and set it to a layered soundtrack of automated industrial production. This book is a record of the two films alongside a discussion with art historian Tom McDonough. With earlier projects in Paris, Japan and Australia, Gillick engaged in representing the science of the climate crisis. A Variability Quantifier collects data to feed into the global system extending his artistic elevation of the maths and science of our shared climate emergency.

Foreword by Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Andria Hickey
Conversation with Liam Gillick and Tom McDonough
Copublished by Fogo Island Arts in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada

Liam Gillick is a New York based British born artist known for contributions in architecture, sculpture, video, and word art. His work focuses on expanding ideas of labor, time, and color through his distinctive conception of exhibition as a medium. Gillick initiated this approach in the 1990s and has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Gwangju Museum of Art, Korea; Madre Museum, Naples; Serralves Museum, Porto; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, New York and Tate, London. He consistently contributes to international biennials: Documenta Kassel, Istanbul Biennial, the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennial, and the 1st Vilnius Biennial of Performance Art.

Josée Drouin-Brisebois is Producer and Senior Manager of National Outreach at the National Gallery of Canada, where she was formerly Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.

Nicolaus Schafhausen is a curator, director, author, and editor of numerous publications on contemporary art. Since 2011 he has been the Strategic Director of Fogo Island Arts, Canada, an initiative of Shorefast, a charitable foundation dedicated to finding alternative solutions for the revitalization of areas prone to emigration.

Claire Shea is the Director at Fogo Island Arts, Canada, an initiative of Shorefast, a charitable foundation dedicated to finding alternative solutions for the revitalization of areas prone to emigration.