This body of work, Ash Coates explores the parallels between the 19th-century decline of the whaling industry and our present-day energy transition. By drawing from the visual language of board games, pinball machines, and role-playing games, these paintings play with the idea of energy, extraction, and transformation as a kind of game; strategic, high-stakes, and unpredictable. 

Like the whalers of the past, we find ourselves navigating shifting tides, clinging to fading industries while new paths emerge. Games, like painting, offer a space to test possibilities, to simulate futures, and to confront the absurdities of our choices. In this way, each piece becomes both a proposition and a provocation—an invitation to reimagine the rules, roles, and risks in how we move forward. This exhibition treats painting not as a static image, but as an experimental terrain—where history, play, and urgent questions about our shared future collide.