Note: Registrations open 6pm Thursday 25 June. Everyone is welcome but space is limited—prompt registration is essential.

Join us at the IMA for Essay Club no. 6 with Holly Anderson. We’ll discuss ‘Viscosity’ a chapter from Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013).

The chapter unpacks Morton’s concept of ‘hyperobjects’, a term used to describe things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans. For example, Morton says a hyperobject could be climate change, or a black hole, or the sum total of all uranium on Earth, or a very long-lasting human-made product, like Styrofoam. In this session, we will discuss viscosity as a quality of hyperobjects — their ability to ‘stick’ to beings involved with them. We will also discuss how hyperobjects change perception, contemporary art, and experience.

Holly Anderson is a painter whose work explores the limits of visual perception and the optical experience of sunlight. She’ll discuss her interpretation of Morton’s Hyperobjects in relation to her work.

Join us for pizza and drinks.

_____________________________________________________

Join us at the IMA for Essay Club. Whether you’re a university student, emerging arts worker, artist, or someone who thinks critically about culture, there’s space at the table. Each session, our well-read friends from the neighbourhood will select a text that’s shaping their ideas, conversations, and approaches to contemporary arts practice. We dig into the ideas together, with a focus on how global conversations might translate locally.

Your Essay Club hosts for 2026 include Nicholas Aloisio-Shearer (Institute of Modern Art), Holly Anderson (Artist), Madeline Brewer (Institute of Modern Art), Elena Dias-Jayasinha (Museum of Brisbane), Holly Eddington (Milani Gallery), Jocelyn Flynn (UQ Art Museum), Tay Haggarty (Outer Space), Llewellyn Millhouse (Wreckers Artspace), and Holly Riding (State Library of Queensland).