Julian Charrière: Hard Core

2.46 billion years in the making. This book surveys the breadth of French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière’s elemental output on display at Mona—where stone grinds, iceberg groans, mountain heaves—to ponder, among many things, how deep is deep time? As well as delving into Breathe: a permanent new artwork built into the museum’s foundations, where the artist harnesses science to release oxygen molecules locked into rock all those 2.46 billion years ago and you can breathe that ancient air breathed by no other organism. Ever.

Richly illustrated with photography of the exhibition at Mona, the catalogue features new essays and poetry commissioned from evolutionary biochemist and oxygen expert Nick Lane, author Robert Macfarlane, renowned for his writing on nature, people and place, and leading Australian poet Sarah Holland-Batt. Alongside further commentary from Mona’s Jarrod Rawlins, Luke Hortle, Jane Clark and David Walsh, a small god who bends the will of his acolytes to his grand mission of breeding and caring for white elephants.