Peak Oil, Energy Slaves exhibition at Science Gallery Bengaluru

7,500 kilometres away from Luxembourg, my comic Peak Oil is currently being exhibited at Science Gallery Bengaluru, in the city that is also known as Bangalore.

The location: Science Gallery Bengaluru

Science Gallery Bengaluru is part of the network of international Science Galleries, which each holds various artistic exhibitions and lectures with a view to science outreach and art-science collaborations. At present, there are Science Gallery locations in seven cities around the world.

Above: the entrance to Science Gallery Bengaluru. Photo credit: Science Gallery Bengaluru.

The exhibition: CARBON

My comic Peak Oil is being displayed as part of the current CARBON exhibition that is on display in the gallery between 28 November 2023 to 31 July 2024, featuring 36 exhibits by both Indian and international artists and scholars.

CARBON explores our complex relationship with the controversial and fundamental element. While carbon is dismissed as a villain in today’s global warming discourse, the exhibition aims to provide an all-round view of the element.

My artwork: the Peak Oil comic

Peak Oil is one of my two major comics about energy, and the role the fossil fuels play in our modern technology-driven lives. The blurb:

Roughly half of the world’s entire oil supply is gone; half is left. How will our society choose to use the oil that remains?

Australian comics artist Stuart McMillen profiles American geologist M. King Hubbert and his ‘peak oil‘ theory of fossil fuel depletion.

Peak Oil was originally published to my website in 2015, and was later made available for sale as a self-published comic book. It remains one of my most popular pieces that I have published, with readers seeming to appreciate the wide-scope of thinking that sits behind the comic.

As you can see, in CARBON, the entire comic is shown displayed on a wall, the pages of the comic displayed in 5 tiers.

Above: Peak Oil by Stuart McMillen displayed as a wall-sized installation at the CARBON exhibition. Photo credit: Science Gallery Bengaluru.

My neighbouring artwork: Energy Slave Tokens

My Peak Oil artwork was installed in a part of the exhibition next to an art installation titled Energy Slave Tokens, designed by by Disnovation & Baruch Gottlieb.

From the artwork’s description:

The Energy Slave Tokens consists of a series of weights made of bitumen, which are the energy equivalents to specific quantities of physical human labour time (ie. 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year, 1 life). This series of weights is designed to present the orders of magnitude that separate the labor power generated by our human bodies from the energy exploited mostly from fossil fuels which powers the technosphere.

The weights are, therefore, a visceral way for gallery visitors to perceive the relative weakness of human bodies compared to the immense power of fossil fuels. We begin to comprehend the vast levels of technological and material resources that simply would not exist human bodies alone were responsible for making our world. For those who want to dig deeper, I have a series of blog posts titled Energy Slaves reflections where I expand on this theme.

(Out of interest, originally the Science Gallery Bengaluru team and I discussed the idea of including my own Energy Slaves comic in this exhibition, forming a direct thematic link with the Energy Slave Tokens. But for reasons that are too lengthy to discuss here, the plan shifted, and we opted to instead display the related Peak Oil in this exhibition.)

Printed copies of my Peak Oil and Energy Slaves books

To add extra context to the installation, printed copies of my Peak Oil and Energy Slaves comic books were available for visitors to read through.

A reminder that these books are available for you to buy through my online store! Professionally-printed in A5 size, the comic books are the best way to read these comics, and feature endnotes with short biographies of the careers of M. King Hubbert and Buckminster Fuller.

Photos from the exhibition

Credit to Science Gallery Bengaluru for supplying me with all of the photos shown on this page. Thank you for the permission to use your images.

Above: Simon Coveney T.D., Irish Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment visits Science Gallery Bengaluru’s CARBON exhibition in 2024, and inspects Energy Slave Tokens and Peak Oil artworks