This month marks the 26 UN Climate change conference in Glasgow UK and this theme climate change and land art or Earth art is the theme for this issue. The power of intangibleness in art could be the core of creation and transformation: perception, habits, culture, language, time, or memory can be channels used to define artistic practice and this is the core practice of Land art and this symbiosis between tangible and immaterial is what, along with history, builds the identity of a territory.
What is so wonderful about the responses we get from the open calls is the interpretation and creative variety of the the work submitted. The work demonstrates how Land Art or Earth art is being used to raise awareness of the environment, be that nature related, social or economically.
Artist name: Monika Tobel
Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/tobelart/
Website: www.monikatobel.com
Description: Humus Hominid / Meditation on the semiotics of belonging / Humus Hominid / We are all compost / Human / Humble / Humus / Hominid / Humility / Humiliate / All come from the root humus/homo, which means soil / Even linguistically, humanity goes back to the earth. / handsewn suit from turf.
Artist name: Chris Marshall
Description: Title “Island Drift”. 1971 // Grass, soil and timber. // Southsea, Hampshire.
This work was made at at time when some artists were becoming aware of environmental issues. There was a dawning of recognition to the many factors in our environment that were becoming of concern. As an artist I had my own visions of the problems and challenges and the first stirrings of the necessity to make work reflecting these.
I see this particular work as being just as relevant now as it was fifty years ago.
Artist name: Richard Hyde
Instagram: @richardthyde // Website: https://richardhydeartist.com/
Description: Irre Wisce, 2021 // Plywood, metal hardware, cloth, photographs
The River Erewash (Irre Wisce in old English) forms the county border between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire and since the industrial revolution, it has been poisoned with toxic waste, rendered devoid of life and culverted out of sight to make way for countless waves of transport infrastructure. But in stark contrast, this beautifully sinuous river has provided inspiration for world-renowned writers, poets and naturalists as it steadfastly and obliviously meanders its way south. In this piece, the artist has explored how the descriptive language humans have attached to the River Erewash has mirrored the meandering curves of the watercourse itself in how it has ebbed and flowed between romantic reverence and political rhetoric. We are asked to consider how our physical distance from natural beauty impacts our perception of it as either a precious place of solace or as an obstruction to human enterprise.
A video of the live installation is here: https://youtu.be/FKwmWoy5YD4
Artist name: Thore Sundermeyer
Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/artethore/
Website: www.thore-sundermeyer.de
Description: This work of art with the name "erosion" is representative
for paying more attention to nature in order to
learn from it. That works best when you copy the nature.
The aim is to raise awareness for it to understand nature
to counteract climate change on a long term way.
Here is a youtube link, where I explain all the process
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIesNQPcWJI
Size: 53 x 36 cm // Date: 9 / 21 // Technique: mixed media on canvas
Artist name: Liam Collins
Instagram account: @Liamardo007
Website: Www.liamcollinsart.com Instagram: Saatchi online art gallery: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/721258 https://www.artsy.net/show/artonique-the-uk-art-collection-39-by-9?page=2&sort=partner_show_position
Description: “Cicada Guitar” is a sound interactive piece that engages with the audience. Entitled "Cicada Guitar" it is a forest bird song playing guitar that silences itself when approached. This piece is designed to provoke critical thinking around nature's genius at camouflage in order to survive extinction.
Artist name: Roy Staab
Instagram @roystaab // Website: roystaab@blogspot.com
Description: In the farmer's field next to my studio, land that undulates, I made a guided circle in the old snow on February 25, 2021. Because of the shape of the land, I could not make a good circle by eye. I walked out to the centre of the area and established a compass point to create a foot step-circle in the snow 57 feet in diameter. All the footsteps are there to tell the story. Photographed with a drone after.
Artist name: Jacqui Jones
Instagram: @jacquijonesart
Website: http://www.jacquijones.co.uk/jacquijones/Home.html. https://twitter.com/jacquijonesart?lang=en
Description: 'A Linear Depiction of Time' connects with the elemental feeling of natural materials. Created during 2020/21 it forms part of an ongoing series of work that features the upward trajectory of climate change graphs. The work is centred on what it is to be alive now with reference to the past and the future. It grounds scientific data in a natural context, considering the human and the non-human actions that contribute to the tipping point we have now reached.
Artist name: Liz Clifford
Instagram: @liz_clifford_art
Website: https://www.axisweb.org/p/lizclifford/ https://vimeo.com/user42817388
Description: 'On Thin Soil'. The work explores the issues of soil depletion and pollution. The beech sapling was rescued from the place it had seeded itself in a track used by recreational 4 x 4 drivers. A year later it was incorporated in this work along with a small selection of the waste collected from that same, ‘protected’, rural location.
Artist name: Luca Serasini
Instagram: @lucaserasini10
Website: www.lucaserasini.it/progettocostellazioni
Description: This land art project about stars and constellations talks about the difficult of people to see and feel the night sky because the light pollution.
I try to re-active an interest to the people for the stars with the possibility to "walk around the stars"
Artist name: Margaret LeJeune
Instagram: @margaret_lejeune
Website: www.margaretlejeune.com
Description: “The images in Shifting Halo series document how climate change and logging practices are impacting the Boreal Forest. This woodland biome, also known as the Emerald Halo, circles the northern portion of the globe. The photographic works draw attention to the damage caused by clearcutting, including the release of carbon stored in the soil and trees and the destruction of resident bird habitat. Soundwaves of Boreal Chickadee calls punctuate several images in this series to silently echo the depleting number of avian species in this shifting landscape. This work was created as part of an artist residency at the University of Notre Dame’s Environmental Research Centre (UNDERC).”
Artist name: Rosalind Lowry
Instagram: @rosalindlowry
Website: www.rosalindlowryartist.com
Description: Blue Eyed Grass, an installation of an endangered plant on the peatlands of County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Created as part of a sculpture trail across the peatlands. The installation was awarded a Social Art Award from the Institute for Art and Innovation in Berlin in 2021.
Artist: James M. Moran
Instagram: @anne_moranne
Bio: I am a sheep farmer on a traditional farm with field divisions of stone walls and mostly hundred of years old hedges of
native trees and bushes. As a non professional artist I work with various media producing art works and installations on
themes that have an ecological slant.
Description: The work is composed of 37 no. 6 ft. by 6 ft. plastic membranes stretched in wooden batons and secured to timber rails on the ground. The lettering is about 100 no. 2 ft. by 5 ft. wooden panels painted white. The work is centred within the shape of a 3 acre ,3 corner field which forms a shield with the work as a crest thereon. The materials used are recycled wood and plastic.
Artist name: Rups Cregeen
Instagram: @rupscregeen_
Website: www.rupscregeen.co.uk
Description: Cardinal Markers warn mariners of a potential hazard and prompt them to pass North, South, East or West of its position. They use yellow and black bands of colour on the upright poles to signify direction. Cones, which appear as double triangles from a 360 degree position, re-enforce this. Basing my work on these signifiers, Navigating Elements uses colours that are personally representative of the sea; red, neon yellow and marine blue, to reveal the direction of travel. Geometric triangular shapes reference the triangular cones atop the cardinals but have been adapted. Each geometric shape will hold a hand blown glass vessel designed to act as a petri-dish to capture one of Aristotle’s four elements: Water (rain), Earth (leaves and twigs), Fire (sunlight) and Air. Each cardinal will prompt the visitor to Surrey Heathlands to change direction, following a path around the heath.
Artist name: Joe Ford
Instagram: @jose.konst
Description: It started with photography of some cut off trunks from a tree via a logging site near my home town in Northumberland. The trees that granted my photography and the logging industry with so many materials are the same that encompassed my childhood. This cornucopia for my friends and I to imbue our devilish youthful antics. Seeing that natural space now, after all that natural beauty was cleared for profit and building permission, walking through that space brought memories of my childhood, this sense of nostalgia made me question what is left of the biology me and my friends were surrounded by? Wanting to explore these feelings and questions further I created this digital render of the photographs I took. The rings of the wood transformed into wave like energies, flooding the space with a sinister echolocation or radiation, like the space is communicating. This darker composition pulled out feelings of bitterness and anger of the loss of such a treasured natural space. Within the wider context of the social-economic state of the world and how abused our natural environments are, my story is only a tiny grain upon this destructive heap our species have inflicted onto this world.
Artist name: Eugene Macki
Instagram: @eugenemackistudio
Website: www.eugenemacki.com
Description: In line with random encounters II, 2021 | 60 x 300 x 300 cm | Wood.
Artist name: Tere Chad
Instagram: @terechad
Website: www.terechad.com
Description: The Re-Enlightenment is a monument that makes a recycling statement and invites to rethink if the rational ideas of the Enlightenment really brought us the wealth we wanted. It attempts to give the new light for our society, even seeming alive as the bottles make a nice eco when the wind blows. It is a piece that speaks about the urge of not forgetting our ability of sensing the world through our hands, and not forgetting that our planet is alive. It has the shape of a shell bio-mimicking the hermit crab’s recyclable houses.
Artist name: Liz McGowan
Instagram: @lizmcgowanart
Website: www.lizmcgowan.com
Description: The sea becomes the blood of the heart … the incoming tide first fills the heart, then overwhelms it … if we carry on exploiting her … nature will take us back into our original salty element … .we will undergo a sea change that won't be of our choosing. Every drop of water in our bodies has been sea, has been ocean, has been all animals and all plants. We are a tiny part of all that is and we need to wield what power we think we might have responsibly, with love and with respect.
Artist name: Kathy Bruce
Instagram: @Kat2bruce
Website: Www.kathybruceartist.com
Description: Title: Sod Mound Maiden
Dimensions: 10’ H x 25’ W x 22’ L
Materials: Bamboo, Chicken wire, straw mesh, sod, raffia
Location: East Haddam, Connecticut // Venue: I-Park Foundation
Description: Sod Mound Maiden is a bamboo and sod figure conceived and constructed in woodland setting at I-Park Foundation. A five-foot bamboo torso of a female figure emerged from a sod mound “skirt” of live sod covering a complex bamboo latticework twenty-five feet wide, twenty-two feet deep and 10 feet high. The earth mound was open at the front and rear of the figure’s skirt creating a child-size tunnel for visitors to pass through. My intention was for the viewer to enter into and exit the woman’s skirt (mound) to experience a symbolic ritual suggesting birth, rebirth and the nurturing aspects of motherhood.
Artist name: Tanya Preminger
Instagram: @tanyapreminger
Website: http://www.tanyapreminger.com/
Description: “Round Balance”,2008 Soil, grass 900 x 900 x 260 cm Saint-Flour, France.
Concept: The project expresses, in a material form, the philosophical law of life, of the balance between the opposite sides of one entity.
Artist name: Zac Greening
Instagram: @zacgreening
Website: www.zacgreening.com
Description: Cube photo - I use the cube as a symbol to represent man's manipulation of the natural environment.
Artist name: steve hines
Instagram: @stevehinesartist
Website: www.stevehines.net
Description: A land art work from many years ago titled: 'the grass is greener' (the word 'is' in italics), was a positive affirmation for new hope and positivity and a statement that the grass will be greener. The work also alludes to a sense of freedom and natural growth. The land and grass around the heart shape is cut very short, controlled, stunted whilst the heart-shaped grass is free to grow, abundant and healthy - and also a lot greener as it has been allowed to 'bloom'.
Artist name: Shona Fraser
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shonafraserart/
Description: Using only fallen branches and twigs collected from the surrounding area I created a circular portal over the track between two hazel trees, separating the track from the space beyond. The mythology of the hazel tree associates it with the acquisition of knowledge, so I have named it the Wisdom Portal in the hope that those who step through will see the space as I do and learn to love its quiet simplicity.
Artist name: Maja Spasova
Instagram: @art.majaspasova
Website: www.majaspasova.com www.facebook.com/Art.MajaSpasova www.youtube.com/user.MajaSpasova
Description: BRIGHT SHINY ME, 2014 - Morven Farms, UVA commissioned by VCCA, USA. 4500 mirrors, each 10x10 cm, sound composition 30 min played in loop , sound equipment, electricity. The mirror surface, in total 20x20 m, levitates 30 cm above the ground, reacting to the changes of wind, light and sound. A living impressionist painting, where the great dance in the sky - birds, sun, moon, planets, stars, comets, rockets and flying spirits - becomes revealed for the gaze of the earth inhabitants. The sound composition was created in collaboration with Luis Hilario Arevalo.