Panel Discussion on Habitable Climes
Proudly co-hosted with the High Commission of Canada to the UK
London, 3 April 2025.
The Sunderland Collection Art Programme arranged a panel discussion with artist Kristina Chan as part of the programming around Habitable Climes, the body of work created by Kristina in response to the Collection.
The panel was held at Canada House in London, and generously co-hosted by The High Commission of Canada to the United Kingdom. This convivial conversation was moderated by the Art Programme's curator Beth Greenacre, and featured Dr Jago Cooper, Dr Marta Weiss, and Dr Katie Parker with an introduction by Caitlin Workman, Head of Public Diplomacy at the High Commission.
Installation shots of the Habitable Climes exhibition by Kristof Jeney
Watch the Discussion
About the Artist
Kristina Chan in Canada Gallery, London. Image by Haych Digital
Kristina Chan is a Canadian-born artist living in London. She works between printmaking, photography, and public installation. Her practice utilises narrative and site specificity to evoke a felt history and sense of place. Inspired by post-Impressionism, Japanese prints and contemporary photography, her work explores the boundaries between individual and collective memory, and how these colliding narratives can affect our interpretation of space.
Kristina has exhibited globally, most notably at the Louvre during the Fifth Annual Exposure Award Black and White Collection; Offprint TATE at TATE Modern (2015, 2016, 2018); the Royal Academy London (2019, 2020, 2021, 2023); Lightbox Museum (2022); Royal Academy of Art Antwerp (during the first edition of the KoMASK Master Printmaking Salon, 2017); Oseana Kunst og Kultursenter Bergen (2018); Museum für Moderne Kunst Bremen, Mindepartementet Museum of Art and Photography Stockholm, Hellingkreuzer HOF Venna (all 2016); and the Royal Scottish Academy (2019, 2018, 2019,2020).
Kristina's work is in the permanent collection of the V&A and the Royal Collection, Clarence House. She has won numerous awards and grants, including the Canada Council for the Arts Explore & Create Grant (2021) and Digital Originals Innovation Grant, the Ingram Prize, and Queen Sonja Print Award Finalist (2020); the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Project Grant (2017, 2018); Royal Society of Painter Printmakers RE Anthony Dawson Printmakers Prize (first place, 2017); Villiers David Travel Grant (2015); Canadian General Governor’s Award for Excellence (2010); and Government of Canada’s Millennium Award (2009).
Kristina graduated from the Royal College of Art (RCA MA Print) in 2016.
Meet the Panellists
Haych Digital
Beth Greenacre is an art advisor, curator and consultant. Beth builds art collections with personal, cultural and critical meaning as well as market significance. Soon after graduating from The Courtauld Institute of Art, Beth Greenacre became the curator of the David Bowie collection.
As well as co-curating numerous exhibitions with Bowie, she oversaw the sale of work from his collection at Sotheby’s in 2016. From 2000, Greenacre was Director of Bowieart, an online platform to support young emerging artists. From 2004 to 2017 she was co-director of ROKEBY, a commercial gallery in London. Greenacre is Chairperson of the Courtauld Alumni Committee, sits on the Executive Committee of The Association of Women in the Arts, and is an Advisory Board member of She CURAtes: The Residency.
Find out more about Beth's role as Curator of the Sunderland Art Programme here.
Haych Digital
Dr Jago Cooper is Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts and Professor of Art and Archaeology at University of East Anglia. For more than twenty years Jago has worked for and with museums, cultural ministries, technology companies, and heritage organizations around the world to explore and communicate aspects of the great human story. His publications provide innovative perspectives on cultural experience and interpretation of material expression. Jago's research has ranged across universal questions including climate change, technological revolution, colonial encounters and social innovation. He has always worked hard to engage a broader public audience with his research interests through exhibitions, digital platforms and broadcast media, including writing and presenting over a dozen documentaries for the BBC.
After a decade as the Head of the Americas at the British Museum, Jago joined the Sainsbury Centre in 2021. The Centre is a genre-defying art museum with world-class collections ranging from Jomon ceramics to Giacometti bronzes with bold acquisitions continually being made to intrigue, inform and inspire new audiences. It is the perfect place for Jago’s interests and experiences as it is a universal museum of human expression with a unique perspective on how art can foster cultural dialogue and (ex)change.
Haych Digital
Dr Marta Weiss is the Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She joined the V&A in 2007 after two years in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She holds a BA in the history of art from Harvard and an MA and PhD from Princeton in the same field, with a focus on the history of photography.
Her exhibitions include Light From the Middle East: New Photography, The Camera Exposed and Julia Margaret Cameron. Most recently, she co-curated the inaugural exhibition of the new V&A Photography Centre. Her books include Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to electrify you with delight and startle the world (2015) and Making it Up: Photographic Fictions (2018).
Haych Digital
Dr. Katie Parker is the Cartographic Collections Manager at the Royal Geographical Society, where she promotes and preserves their collection of more than a million maps, charts, atlases, globes, and gazetteers. Trained as a historian (PhD, University of Pittsburgh, 2016), she is an expert in the histories of maps and mapping, exploration, empire, and the early modern Pacific world. Her publications include Historical Sea Charts: Visions and Voyages Through the Ages (2021).
Katie teaches the history of maps and mapping at London Rare Book School (School of Advanced Study, University of London) and the history of architecture at NYU London. She is the Co-Editor of Imago Mundi: The International Journal for the History of Cartography, and is the Administrative Editor of the Hakluyt Society.
About Habitable Climes
Habitable Climes is an extraordinary body of work created by Kristina in response to the Collection, during her participation in the Sunderland Collection Art Programme.
Featuring a range of photographic and printing techniques, Habitable Climes reflects on the subjective concept of ‘fact’ when it comes to recording territories, and the part that what Kristina refers to as "fantasy and fallacy” plays in the creation of maps, measurements and visual records.
Objects from the Sunderland Collection that inspired Kristina include the 'Blue China' terrestrial map and its celestial counterpart, the map of the ancient known world from Abraham Ortielius' atlas, and an exquisite set of globe gores by Jocodus Hondius.
This body of work is named after the ancient theory first presented by Artistotle, that the Earth contains five 'clima': two frigid zones, two temperate zones, and a torrid equatorial zone. Only the temperate zones were believed to be habitable. This theory persisted through mapmaking for centuries.
Nature deserves to keep its mystery, and we deserve to be amazed by it. In the desert, I photographed a prehistoric-seeming crater of dust which was once a lake, and in the Arctic I encountered a vast and empty-seeming landscape which was in fact teeming with life. I hope that this exhibition will inspire curiosity, enjoyment and perhaps even new questions about exploration itself.
-Kristina Chan
The physical exhibition of Habitable Climes was held at Canada Gallery from 20 March to 30 April 2025. View the full online exhibition here.
Acknowledgements
The Sunderland Collection would like to extend its thanks to The High Commission of Canada in the United Kingdom and the Public Programmes and Events Teams for all of their support during this partnership. We are honoured to collaborate with the High Commission for the Habitable Climes exhibition.
We are also most grateful to the Royal Geographical Society for opening its archives to Kristina, and allowing access to the beautiful, iconic instruments in its collections.
Installation shot of the Habitable Climes exhibition by Kristof Jeney
