Climate change/eco artists

The Copenhagen debacle, in which our world leaders completely failed to see the bigger -non monetary- picture, has at least pushed climate change/the destructiveness of humans on nature back into the spotlight. Although there will always be cynics and strong debate as to our ability to measure climate change in the past through carbon testing/geology etc... it is hard to argue that we are GOOD for the planet. Especially at the moment with the number of endangered species, both plant and animal, rising and air and freshwater quality decreasing.

John Key needs his head re-screwed on. The financially driven shortsightedness of the national government is unbelievable, and they're destroying the 'clean green' image of New Zealand for one of our biggest industries- tourism. Not that we are clean or green, BUT we have the potential to be, and a large number of international visitors come to New Zealand to experience the nature of the country. Twitch.


So with that in mind, I've been browsing a few pretty cool exhibitions with a climate change/eco driven focus.

Acid Rain by Bright Ugochukwu Eke.

RETHINK — Contemporary Art & Climate Change is "an exhibition of 26 works created by trendsetting Nordic and international contemporary artists working in the intersection between art, culture and climate change."

It's interesting. I really like this quote, which comes from Bruno Latour's A Plea for Earthly Sciences which IMHO should be compulsorary reading for every literate adult on the planet....:

" Everything that earlier was merely given becomes “explicit”. Air, water, land, all of those were present before in the background: now they are explicitated because we slowly come to realize that they might disappear —and we with them."

Pretty much sums it up doesn't it?  There are a few more pictures on Greenmuze.

Royal Academy of Arts (UK) at the GSK Contemporary is currently running Earth: Art of a changing world

There's a neat little highlights gallery here. Interesting to see Cornelia Parker and Mona Hatoum in there. Parker's work in particular is an adaption of  what she's done before, but it's still effective. 

Find more videos like this on artreview.com

Antti Laitinen, who is also part of the exhibition at GSK,  is a Finnish artist, and you can see a fair bit of his It's My Island exhibition in the video above. 

All in all a lot to think about in relation to my own work + dissertation, and the honours proposal that I should be thinking up by January 5th.. hmmm..

Grass Art.

Nice little timelapse video of the Fly Tower installation. 
Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey  have been covering buildings and monuments in grass for quite some time now. There's a good interview with them here and a great, simple explanation of how they make grass photographs here.

 

“we work with a living material, and life is compelling.”-Harvey
I really like Harvey and Ackroyds stuff, 

I also found, during the course of my meanderings, these grass flipflops: Where The Green Grass Grows (WTGGG) Flip Flops by Seoul-born, London-based artist Hyock Kwon, which are very cute.

I like the playfulness of grass. The greenery that we all have an inbuilt longing for...

the grass is always greener...

It's also a very natural, resiliant thing, that covers at least 25% of the earth's land mass (according to BBC's planet earth series), although human maintained lawns are controlled versions, it's still a living organism.

I also just really love green. It's something I'm just coming to. My favourite colour as a child was blue, but now I think there are a lot of colours that I really like, and grass green is definitely one of them.

Nele Azevedo

Brazillian Artist Nele Azevedo has been making little ice men since 2005. Xtiaan told me about this about a month ago, and but couldn't remember the name of the artist.
The above photos came from an installtion in Berlin Square, and were used to highlight climate change. Interestingly, Azevedo had no initial interest in the environmental side of the work. When asked in an interview on greenmuze.com if she was a climate change activist she replied,

"No. I'm an artist, master of visual arts from the University of Sao Paulo (UNESP). This work was conceived as a critical view of the official historical monuments. As the reading and interpretation of an art piece is open, I'm glad it can also speak of urgent matters that threaten our existence on this planet."

Well that's interesting, I know what that's like. I know that I'm creating work that speaks to global environmental issues, but I'm an artist first and formost....

Greenmuze.com is a pretty sweet site though, and will be duely added to the links bar.

Weathering the Perfect Storm? What can I do?

Yeah, I've been on BBC's Science/Environment page again. At least they're reporting something, not many other media groups even bother. I'm well aware of the fact that all media releases are biased in one way or another, but the scientific community has been unanimous in telling us, "you're fucking the planet," for years!

"The UK's chief scientist John Beddington has warned that by 2030 the rising global population will create a 'perfect storm' of food, energy and water shortages - unless the world changes its ways.

But despite virtually unanimous academic opinion, half of us still believe science is divided on whether mankind's activities contribute to climate change, and more than a quarter of us don't think our individual behaviour makes any difference to the environmental crisis."

These few articles have got me wondering, just how we're going to survive cause it's one thing to talk about changing lifestyles and habits, it's another thing to actually do it. I've been trying to get my family into a meat+dairy free day a week, but resistance to change from the carnivorous males of the pride is fierce. Especially from the alpha male, who is passive-aggressively stuck in his ways. Maybe I need to get him a 'smart meter' so he can measure what he's saving on electricity/energy if he changes things. But even the suggestion that we use my partner Becca's new model Fridge instead of our ten-year-old-with-leaky-seals one in the kitchen have been met with stubborn resistance.

The more I read about the state of the planet, and the more I discuss it with those that are working in Ecology or Conservation, the more I want to be able to make a difference. This is the driving force behind my art work at the moment. Science is so vital to our existence, but the communication between scientific communities and the rest of the world is often not as effective as it needs to be.

I think if more artists can push into making art 'environmentally' or making art which is conceptually charged about important climate/political issues, people will get a higher dose of exposure to the same message. We're living in a fundamentally visual culture, people have shorter attention spans due to television and new media, so why not show them images/artworks that challenge them to think about the state of things, which might prompt them into doing their own reading on the subject, which may inspire change.

I know there's a lot of maybes and mights, but I think sensationalism. globalisation and the media have made people feel like the problems are so huge, that they can't actually do anything about them. This goes for so many things.

I remember as a child watching Save the Children Fund adverts showing hundreds of children that were starving, these adverts were overwhelming, the poverty and sickness such huge things that it felt inaccessible. But when they changed to having the story of a single child, it became accessible, and more people felt like there was something they could do. This is the kind of model that needs to be applied to climate change.

Yoko Ono was saying on twitter the other day, that everyone should try and do 'Meat free Mondays' because the impact of that alone on the level of methane etc. released into the environment. It was good to know I'm not the only one trying to encourage that. And I'm sure she has a lot more clout than I do! It's little things like this that everyone needs to start doing. Even remember to turn the lights off. Scientists are already calling this the age of waste! That's not a name I want to be branded with.

I was speaking to Marty Vreede about my Waiora piece the other day, and my concern for the fresh water systems in this country. He told me that he's been saying to people for years that the wars in 100years time are going to be over water, and as such, NZ is in deep trouble - there is huge rainfall on the West Coast of the South Island, war could come here.

Surely it's better to act now than reach times where things like that, and the predicted food, energy and water shortage of 2030 which is being branded 'Perfect Storm'.

From my point of view, I've got reason to fight for a better future that I never really had before. After years of depression and uncertainty about whether I'd be around much longer, I've come to a place where I'm very settled, grounded, and sure of what I'm doing with my life. A lot of that is down to meeting my partner Becca.

The impact that having her in my life has been profound. The love and support she gives me allow me the freedom to pursue anything, secure in the knowledge that even if it doesnt all go to plan, I'll still have stability.

The exposure I've had through her, and her passion for Ecology, to the academic/scientific community in Massey's Ecology department has really influenced my work. It has given me artistic direction for this year and probably the foreseeable future.

Having the stability to plan a future with her has allowed me to push my work in ways that I may not have had the courage to otherwise. It's something that I can not thank her enough for. But the great part about our relationship is that she's found similar inspiration in my passion for Art, and my pushing through to forge my career. It does feel like together we can make changes. Together we've found a future that's worth fighting for, for us and our children...

BTW if you missed it 60minutes on NZ's Freshwater.

FAD newsletter and early morning ramblings.

So I subscribe to the FAD newsletter, which sends me a daily update of random things going on in the art world. This morning there was a video interview with D*Face about street art, and a link about Antony Gormely (who I've mentioned before) whose Domain Fields is at The Garage Space for Contemporary Culture in Moscow.It is reportedly "a huge installation of 287 sculptures made from the body moulds of 200 volunteers." Gormley loves his multiples! I really like the ephemeral quality of this work. The space in and around the figures, but how long did this take to make? and how many assistants!?
The mind boggles.

But perhaps more importantly, the FAD post about Gormley linked back to Art Observed, which has news about contemporary and modern art exhibitions, mostly based in New York... it seems pretty similar to Daily Serving well, at least in format, and both can be found in my links bar as well.

I also found on my meanderings (on a Russian Art News site) reference to a recently discovered Venus figure in Germany.
This "Venus" - Venus of Hohle Fel-is reportedly 35000 years old. As with most of the other ancient 'Venus' figurines that have been found, the most emphasised areas are the breasts and genitalia, and the ring carved above its shoulders suggests it was worn as a pendant.

I've been researching the Venus figurines for quite a while now, and have found many conflicting view points as to what they were for. One Dr has even suggested they were carved in the shape of psychedelic mushrooms. Others have suggested they were self portraits, although I'm not sure how much clout this argument has, because even if you're looking down at your own body, you know what other women look like!

The most realistic options in my opinion, are either the 'earth mother/goddess' theories - where the land was looked on as a plentiful 'mother' and worshiped as such, or as a fertility symbol, why else would you emphasise the breasts/stomach/genitalia? It's hard to discount or agree with any theory though, because the best we have are guesses, and we can't but help project our modern day perspective onto things from the past.

Having said that, from what research/archeology has shown us, the climate at the time of the creation of these figurines was pretty harsh, and human technology was still evolving,
people of that time would have been living on the edge - so if they had women as large as that, it meant that they'd had plentiful food for quite some time.

Although, a friend recently pointed out, it may have just been a depiction of a particular woman by someone who was fond of her, I'm not sure they would have found so many with similar features if that was the case.

This paper, has interesting analysis of the Willendorf Venus, and ponders whether it was carved by a male or female. (The Willendorf Venus is perhaps the most universally recognised of all the Venus figurines, and it's the one I'm using in a piece currently.)

Whatever the Venus figurines were used for then, in a modern context, they come to mean something else entirely. Obesity of the developed world, greed, capitalism, the time of waste...dying from hunger,

and dying from hunger....

makes mapping my research seem pretty insignificant! Some how justifying my existence by getting an education and making artwork that speaks to the current global instability, most days I feel like it's a worthwhile thing to do. Not every day though. And what can I possibly know, what perspective can I bring from my middle-class upbringing, that can change the perspective of those around me?

when the media sensationalises things, and you feel like you're helpless to do anything, I think the only thing you can do is change yourself, and those in your immediate circle if you can. We've been encouraging recycling and turning things off at wall at my house, it's not much, but it's a start. I've been trying to get one 'vegetarian' night a week, but separating the men from their meat is quite tricky!

We were told recently to make art that speaks to other things, not just self referential art. I'm not sure where my Venus will sit in that, it speaks to lots of things, but it requires knowledge of the Venus figurines... so is it self referential?

I remember my Mother knew about the Willendorf Venus, and she's my Joe-Public meter: if she gets it, then most people will be able to relate to it on some level, if she goes "huh?" I'm pitching too high, and it's too much of an 'in-joke' for the art institution. So hopefully, it'll sit right.

The longer I wait to do this waiora thing the less confident I am in the art piece. I mean, the concept is ok. I just feel like.. it could have been more, maybe.
Ah well. Moving on to better things. (end ramble)

Meeting with Lorraine Webb

Chaco Kato -
Philosophy of cuttlefish
fishing line, discarded cable codes, installation scene for 2020?(organized project by Ash Keating), variable dimension, 2008
Copyright © 2005-2009 chaco kato All Rights Reserved.
http://www.chacokato.com/

Had a critique with Lorraine yesterday, at my request: she said it was 'FUN' to have a break from paper work. At any rate, she flicked me some artists to look at - relating to my Apple Series and my current environmental concern 'angst'.

She recommended a friend of hers: Chaco Kato, who creates environmental work and works with the Slow Art Movement principles. She also works with recycled materials - some found round her own home, others re-appropriated from landfill.

This kind of work really appeals to me, in both aesthetic and principal.

So I googled environmental + 'slow art movement'... and it appears it's been around for a while!

According to this article/manifesto.. the 'slow movement' began in the 1960's as a reaction to consumerism. Basically - “If it is worth doing well, it is worth doing slow.” (-May West)

I also found this list (2009!) of terms on my search, at greenmuseum.org, which is very helpful!

I feel like this relates a lot to my apple series, and I wish I'd found it sooner. The environmental aspect of Kato's work also reflects issues that are concerning me. Since spending all the time with Becca up at Massey in the Ecology department, it's really become something at the forefront of my consciousness.

This is good, because I work better when I look at 'big picture' things. I'm beginning to realiseb this, and Lorraine articulated it nicely for me. She also said my work is becomming more refined, which is good news.

She also suggested I look at Roni Horn, in particular, her work in Iceland (in relation to idea alluded to in my previous post), Iceland, how fitting!

Roni Horn - Library of Water (water taken from different glaciers)

On some level her work relates back to what I'm doing for Waiora, and the reseach about the quality of New Zealand's freshwater systems that was introduced to me by Dr Mike Joy at an ecology group seminar.

Searches for Roni Horn also lead me to find http://slowpainting.wordpress.com/... which references her several times.