MELBOURNE.- ACCA presents Berlin-based artist von Bismarck’s first Australian solo exhibition, This is not the storm, from Friday 17 April to Sunday 14 June 2026.

Spanning kinetic sculpture, photography, and ambitious video installations, this exhibition brings together more than two decades of work, much of it never before seen in Australia.

This is not the storm showcases the breadth of von Bismarck’s practice, characterised by research-driven experimentation across physics, technology, and the social sciences. Whether channelling the power of raging forest fires, turbulent seas, or hurricanes, von Bismarck engages with elemental forces that defy human control. His work plays with the dual sensations of awe and terror provoked by natural phenomena, offering poetic yet unsettling meditations on perception, scale, and agency.

From transformed everyday objects to large-scale investigations in remote or extreme locations, von Bismarck probes our understanding of reality and questions our relationship with the environment. In doing so, he signals the disastrous consequences of humanity’s domination of the natural world – prompting us to reconsider the systems that have brought us here.

Exhibition highlights include:

• A major new spatial installation occupying ACCA’s main gallery, where suspended geological forms and monumental heads move in formation. Propelled by motors, and governed bymathematical precision, the objects’ trajectories may seem chaotic and arbitrary, but gradually reveal themselves as carefully premeditated and technically precise. The installation invites reflection on a myriad of ideas, ranging from the workings of time to the fallibility of human endeavour.

• An installation featuring Joe is dead 2016, a work co-produced with artists Julian Charrière and Felix Kiessling in which a tumbleweed scrambles along a conveyor belt. The sculptural work is accompanied by the photographic series I am Afraid I Must Ask You To Leave (2018), depicting simulated detonations of natural monuments in US national parks, alongside real-life news coverage of these staged events. Together, this series of works playfully questions how meanings are assigned and why some aspects of nature are considered to be more valuable, more beautiful or more worthy of protection than others.

• The immersive video installation Geh aus mein Herz! (Go forth, my heart!) (2023), presenting treetops swaying in the wind, rustling grasses, and changing stretches of land moved by air currents. Accompanied by a choir, the imagery suggests the singers’ breath were gently setting the treetops in motion. Based on the role of monotheistic Christianity in shaping perceptions of nature, the hymn celebrates the beauty of the natural environment and the joy in contemplating it. Riffing off the nature film genre, the work continues the artist’s inquiry into the construction and staging of nature.

ACCA Senior Curator and Head of Exhibitions, Dr Shelley McSpedden: “Julius von Bismarck marshals wonder, humour, and technical to explore pertinent questions about our relationship to the natural world in the age of the Anthropocene. He operates on both intellectual and emotional registers – at once visceral, silly, and profound. This is not the storm offers an insight into the full range of his work, moving from luscious immersive moving image works, provocative slap-stick sculptures, through to the mesmerising movement of a major new kinetic installation.”