Janet Laurence

The work of Janet Laurence, an Australian site-specific artist, aims to create spaces which cause viewers to contemplate their relationship to the plant life that we are surrounded by. Her work deals with the way in which human activities such as deforestation and soil degradation are destroying landscapes and disconnecting us from the natural environment.
As she described in an interview in Felicity Fenner in Art and Australia magazine in 2010: “The future of many plants is in danger, yet they are central to the earth and existence of all animal life. We are dependent on them for everything from the air we breathe to the food we eat. Plants are organic, not static, objects… Working with living plants you become very aware of their being, their needs and internal processes.” (Janet Laurence, quoted in Art and Australia, Spring 2010, p.64)

In the Shadow, 2000, Sydney, http://www.janetlaurence.com/in-the-shadow/

Janet Laurence uses her artistic practice to draw attention to environmental issues such as climate change and its effect on the plant life that we all depend upon. Laurence’s work highlights both the fragility and the importance of plant life and aims to generate a new respect for the flora that helps to sustain our existence.

Her site-specific piece, In the Shadow, aimed to repair the natural vegetation in Sydney’s Olympic Park in Homebush bay. As well as extensive planting of native plant species, this piece included the installment of twenty-one vertical wands which monitored the chemistry of the river water. By encouraging the growth of native plants in a suburban area of Sydney, In the Shadow, “oxygenates an otherwise quite sterile precinct.”(Felicity Fenner, Art & Australia, p.64)

Laurence believes that “art can bring into public view some confronting environmental issues that without the imprimatur of it being a creative work wouldn’t ordinarily be presented, because so often scientific information is not permitted public access. So, as an artist, the Olympic Park commission was a major opportunity for me – not just to install a work, but to heal an environment.” (Janet Laurence, quoted in Art and Australia, Spring 2010, p.64)
As well as drawing attention to the environmental issues she is engaging with, Laurence’s work is a type of direct action. She uses art as a means to take action to preserve organic landscapes. Part of Laurence’s work includes revitalising plants that are damaged or suffering, such as in Waiting – A Medicinal Garden for Ailing Plants, which was exhibited at the 2010 Sydney Biennale.

Waiting – A Medicinal Garden for Ailing Plants, 2010 Sydney Biennale, http://www.janetlaurence.com/waiting-a-medicinal-garden-for-ailing-plants/

This work consisted of a mesh structure containing numerous plant species which were wrapped in soft netting and connected through tubes containing fluids to aid in their regeneration. It was intended to function as a plant hospital – a place not only for viewers to contemplate the effect human activity has on the natural environment, but also a place where unhealthy plants could heal and florish. While this small space worked to physically rejuvenate plant life, the work as a whole symbolises the plight of many endangered plant species in this time of increasing environmental degradation.

Waiting – A Medicinal Garden for Ailing Plants (detail), http://www.janetlaurence.com/waiting-a-medicinal-garden-for-ailing-plants/

“I try to create a space somewhere between evidence and imagination. While my practice is based on deeply held convictions about the environment and our relationship to it – and I want the work to have a politically environmental voice – I think it’s important that viewers make their own journey and experience it as a space of reflection and interpretation.” (Laurence, Art and Australia, p.67)

Here, Laurence defines the place of her work on the spectrum of art and activism. Her work has a strong environmentalist message, but her approach to this is one which encourages viewers to interpret her meaning in their own time. Laurence sees this process of understanding and comprehending the meaning of her work as being a strategy for engaging viewers more deeply in environmental issues than an information-based activist campaign, as, she believes that “art, if it engages, can linger in the mind the way that pure information can’t.” (Laurence, Art and Australia, p.67)

Michelle Gearon

Australian environment and artist Emma Lindsay

According to drastic new research by the CSIRO, by 2070 up to 30% of Australian wildlife may become extinct as a consequence of our rising climate. Mr Michael Dunlop, one of the writers for the research, has explained that Australia and Victoria in particular may be rendered unrecognisable as our environment changes to adapt to the extreme changes in temperature. It is difficult to comprehend that our grandchildren or great-grandchildren will experience a completely different Australia to the one we do now. You can read more on that research here.

Artist Emma Lindsay has similarly experienced this ambivalence towards the changes in our environment. Her feelings first emerged as she visited the Queensland Museum in 2007. Viewing the sections of taxidermy birds, she was struck with the sense of awe and grief, as it ignited her interest in the topic of the loss of distinct or endangered birds in Australia.

Simulacra #39, oil on canvas paper, variable dimensions, 2009.

Her practices in this subject began with her search to find see the last found Night Parrot, a small native Australian bird with no known sightings between 1912-1979 and very rarely ever since. In a nutshell her practice is an interdisciplinary art project including painting and installation. Lindsay explores the connections between nature, culture, history and art. Especially within these shown works, she explores the loss of native animals due to changes in our ecosystem and climate as well loss of species through human consumption.

Simulacra, oil on canvas paper, variable dimensions, 2009.

She describes her process of painting the dead birds as a sort of “memento mori”, a way of remembering life lost. This idea really hits home within this topic, as if we, as the human race, continue to ignore the idea of memento mori, and don’t prepare better for drastic change in the future, we will be setting up our environment for destruction and breakdown, and a very unsustainable – as well as unlivable – future.

Simulacra #29, oil on canvas paper, variable dimensions, 2009.

 

Alex

Leslie Fry- The Wildlife Sculpture Search Project, 2007

In 2007, Environmental Sculptor Leslie Fry created a 6-piece site-specific artwork integrated within a nature trail at Boca Ciega Millennium Park, Florida. Each sculpture in this project was intentionally made out of transient materials- they will eventually biodegrade and become part of the nature that surrounds them. The 7-foot statue Pining (below right), for example, has been formed out of painted plaster and pine cones. Like the environment surrounding it, this sculpture will change shape and deteriorate over time. All six pieces in The Wildlife Sculpture Search Project fit into the natural environment;

“If you’re walking along, looking for the sculptures,” explains Fry, “You’re also looking carefully at everything around you.”

While Fry’s artwork is beautiful to look at, it also makes a statement about how humans lack awareness of the natural environment. These sculptures aim to bring the relationship between humans and the environment closer. Each sculpture harmoniously exists within the location in which Fry has placed them.

 The Wildlife Sculpture Search Project was specifically designed to intensify awareness about the effects of human impact on the natural environment. The fact that the sculptures require people to go into nature and actively look for them adds to the power of this artwork, serving to remind us of the beauty of untouched nature.

Check out more of Leslie Fry’s artwork at www.lesliefry.com !

Amy Jackson 

*With reference to Chris Baskind (2009), “The Amazing, naturalistic art of Lesie Fry”, at http://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/stories/the-amazing-naturalistic-art-of-leslie-fry

Glass of Coke… No Ice Thanks…

As I ordered a beverage sans ice, the flippant but oft stated “no ice thanks” took on a new resonance. The Age today reported that according to researchers at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre “the Arctic sea ice, a key indicator of climate change, melted to its lowest level on record this year before beginning its autumnal freeze.”

In a culture obsessed with success and breaking records, one might assume more attention will be paid to the news that “the record was broken on August 26, when the ice shrank below the record set in 2007. After that, it kept melting for three more weeks, bringing the ice extent – defined by NSIDC as the area covered by at least 15 per cent ice – to nearly half of the 1979-2000 average.” This month the ice in the Arctic Ocean reached it’s smallest amount since satellite records began 33 years ago.

Yet despite the mounting tangible evidence of human impact on the planet we all share, it seems we are still unwilling to take notice, to take a stand, to make a change. In light of this, earlier posts of works by Joshua Allen Harris and Nele Azevedo also take on further poignancy and significance.

Harris’ Air Bear, which is animated by the wind from the subway, makes literal the intrinsic interconnectivity of human activity/industrialization and the environment. The inherent fragility of the materials used also draws attention to the fragile balancing act in which our world is engaged. The work intervenes in the space of day-to-day human life, reminding us, at least for a brief moment, that our worlds are interconnected. The plastic bag polar bear is both delightful and tragic, a simple incarnation of the reality of the situation we find ourselves in. In the modern urban world wildlife becomes a pleasant, but subordinate aspect of our lives. For the most part, as when Air Bear lies wounded, inanimate and silent, we are happy to simply walk by and ignore it.

The fact that both these artists, like many others, chose to engage public space, rather than limiting their work to confines of the gallery/museum is important, but perhaps more significant is the use of the new powers provided by the internet and social media to proliferate the documentation of these works. This only further solidifies my belief in the importance of sharing these works as best we can, after all I do believe all art is quite useful and I am rather fond of ice in my drink.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/arctic-ice-cover-shrinks-to-half-the-19792000-average-20120920-267n8.html#ixzz26ybvRO5n

Image Via: http://www.lostateminor.com/joshua-allen-harris/

Jane Diserio.

ClimARTe – Arts for a Safe Climate.

Responding to the current state of global climate, ClimARTe is a non-profit body working broadly in the creative realm to create awareness about our changing climate and inspire changes for the future, helping to manage our carbon footprint. Founded in 2010  by Guy Abrahams, Fiona Armstrong and Deborah Hart, the organisation aims to bring together all of those involved in the creative realm, from the organisers to the artists themselves. They acknowledge and harness the power of the arts as an extremely important tool to communicate and express issues effecting humankind and earth, as they explain “Creative thinking and expression help us to communicate and understand the rich relationships which exist between all things”.

It is important to address (and ClimARTe successfully does so) that climate change is not simply a stagnant issue – we can actively protest against climate change, and action changes to halt its progression, and do so effectively through the world of creative arts. As Guy Abrahams says in the video below “you don’t build movements with bar graphs, you build them in part with art….and with anything that engages with the right brain, or with the heart”. This is an incredibly strong statement made by Abrahams and even more so true. His words truly embody the importance of the arts in society and the future.

ClimARTe aim to create a voice within the world of arts, projecting this voice, as well as the issue of climate change, artistically into general society. They are aiming for immediate and creative action and awareness to ensure a safe and livable future of our earth and climate. Climarte strongly supports and aims for a sustainable earth for future generations to come.  Directly responding to reality, science and statistics,  ClimARTe do incredible work in bringing real issues effecting every human being  into the creative realm,  pushing the issue back into society for change – and needfully so.

 

Alex

Michael Landy

“I see this as the ultimate consumer choice” – Michael Landy

Consumerism is a powerful ideology, but rarely do humans consider how facilitating the consumer industry impacts upon the environment; creating more pollution and waste.

In 2001 British artist Michael Landy voluntarily destroyed all of his personal belongings in his performative installation Breakdown, located in the vacated space of a department store on a busy shopping strip in Oxford Street, London.

Landy’s possessions were placed on a conveyer belt which mimicked an assembly line, and a team of 18 people whom Landy employed for the project assisted in pulping and granulating hsi possessions (with the help of a machine) until each item was individually reduced to landfill. This highly systematic approach to the destruction of his belongings is reflective of the mechanical age in which western society lives today; an industrialized world of mass production for mass consumption.

People often consume goods for a purpose then dispose of them to landfill, and Breakdown does just this only in a more radical way. Landy is not denying his own participation in the capitalist process of consumerism, but he is challenging the morality of our actions. Among other intentions and meanings behind this artwork, Breakdown is critical of the negative impact that humans are having on the environment by continuing to purchase goods produced at factories that add to pollution and waste around the world, rather than promote recycling and improving our environment; we need to re-consider our priorities.

This performance based artwork draws attention to the choice we all make to contribute in the global economy and worldwide pollution through mass consumption. Everybody is responsible for the environment and contributes to global pollution by facilitating the consumer industry.

The intangible value that all of our possessions have to us has a more tangible and long term impact on the environment.

Amy Jackson

Chris Jordan

Chris Jordan’s project Running the Numbers (2006-Current), looks at contemporary American culture through the somber lens of statistics.

“My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning.”

At first, Jordan’s digital photo’s seem straight forward, but once you click on them, they gradually magnify to expose the intricacies of the image and what they are constituted of. For example Cans Seurat, 2007 – depicts 106,000 aluminium cans, the number used in the US every thirty seconds;

Before – Cans Seurat, 2007

After – Cans Seurat, 2007

and Packing Peanuts, 2009 – depicts 166,000 packing peanuts, equal to the number of overnight packages shipped by air in the US every hour.

Before – Packing Peanuts, 2009

After – Packing Peanuts, 2009

“The project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society… I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible and overwhelming.” – Chris Jordan, 2008

Please visit Chris Jordan’s website to really appreciate his work! –  http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#car-keys

Joshua Allen Harris

Nele Azevedo

Nele Azevedo Interview
FRIDAY, 12 DECEMBER 2008 GREENMUZE STAFF

Melting Men is a series of art installations from the Minimum Monument project created by Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo. Since 2005, Azevedo has been setting up her Melting Men in various countries around the world. Although originally intended as a critic of the role of monuments in cities, environmentalists around the world are adopting her work as climate change art. We caught up with Nele Azevedo to ask her for a bit more information about her popular art installations.

Why did you make the installation?
The installation is part of an urban intervention project, called Minimum Monument. The project is a critical reading of the monument in the contemporary cities. In a few-minute action, the official canons of the monument are inverted: in the place of the hero, the anonym; in the place of the solidity of the stone, the ephemeral process of the ice; in the place of the monument scale, the minimum scale of the perishable bodies.

The project started with solitary figures, later a multitude of small sculptures of ice were placed in public spaces of several cities. The memory is inscribed in the photographic image and shared by everyone. It is not reserved to great heroes nor to great monuments. It loses its static condition to gain fluidity in the urban displacement and in the change of state of the water. It concentrates on small sculptures of small men, the common men.

Was the latest installation timed to coincide with the Climate Change Talks?
All the interventions took place in several cities of several countries, like São Paulo, Campinas, Ribeirão Preto, Brasilia, Salvador e Curitiba, in Brazil, Paris (France), Havana (Cuba), Braunschweig (Germany), Porto (Portugal) and Firenze (Italy).

How many figures were there in the installation?
The amount of sculptures depends on the place. The place where the intervention happens has always an historical meaning to the town. For instance, the Dom Joao I Plaza, in Porto – Portugal, or the medieval plaza with the bronze lion, in Braunschweig.

In Sao Paulo there were 300 sculptures in April 2005. Later that year, 400 ice figures melted on the L’Opera Stairs and Mairie du Novienne, in Paris. In June 2006 more than 500 melting man were placed in Braunschweig Plaza and in September there were 1000 sculptures melting in the city of Porto. This year the intervention took place in Firenze, Italy were 1200 ice sculptures were placed in the stairs of Instituti delle Inocenti at the Piazza della Santíssima Annunziata, built by the renaissance architect Brunelleschi. As it always happens, the people who were there were invited to help build the monument, placing the ice figures.

When there are more sculptures, the bigger the impact, and it reaches a monumental scale.

How long do the installations last?
The actions lasts 30 to 40 minutes. It depends on the weather at the site of the intervention.

Are you a climate change activist?
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.

http://www.greenmuze.com/art/interviews/641-nele-azevedo-interview.html

 

Felicity Burke

Crushing on Richard Long…

I am crushing on Richard Long, not so much the artist himself, but the beautiful, peaceful and contemplative black and white photographic documentations of his work. When I look at them my mind plays a game of word association, or perhaps thematic association…nostalgic, ritualistic, isolated, natural…disrupted… unified.

There is much contemporary art which examines, or purports to examine and critique, human impact on the environment, consumerism and waste. It is common for this kind of work to ironically, or poignantly engage consumer goods in order to make the point, usually in vast quantities. Long, however, examines human impact on the environment in a very different way.

Long’s work is, in many ways, a product of its time in the sense that much of the iconic art practice from 1960’s represented a desire for a return to a more primal and authentic self, or to examine the world and art from a new conceptual framework. This desire generated a space where sculpture, photography, text, performance and gesture all blend and conflate. This is the space of Long’s work.

For me it is his ability to capture the human trace on the landscape in an enchanting and respectful way which reminds me of the human capacity for a less fraught relationship with the world in which we live.  In the case of his landscape interventions it is his ability to create art without waste which captivates me, his conception of art made simply by intervening in the landscape, walking, moving stones, shifting ash.

Of course I am aware that painting such a utopian picture of his work may appear a little naive. It is undeniable that much of his work is conceived of with the gallery space in mind, performance is turned into consumable, marketable, art-object. Likewise, such works are always open to charges of misappropriated spiritualism or primitivism. Nonetheless I think his photographic documents are beautiful, and refreshing, and provide an alternative vision, a reminder that we were not always so detached from the natural world.

Background image by English artist Richard Long

Images via: http://www.richardlong.org/Sculptures/sculptures11.html

Jane Diserio