This month we felt the need to have our December issue about the environment, as it is a month for many of indulgence and purchasing objects and things we really don’t need.
The Environmental Crisis is a term used to describe the environmental problems that we face today. The main environmental problems include the greenhouse effect and global warming, the ozone layer, tropical forest clearance, mass consumerism and intensive farming. Whilst the problems appear to be largely physical (environmental), the causes and solutions lie much more in people's attitudes, values, and expectations. A number of factors have helped to create these problems, including developments in technology and industry, which have given people a greater ability to use the environment and its natural resources for their own ends. The rapid increase in human population has significantly increased in many countries and led to a rise in the use of natural resources; and the free market economies, play a central role in decision‐making about production, consumption, use of resources, and treatment of wastes; and attitudes towards the environment, taking profit over sustainability.
Our featured artists and writers all have an interest in the environment. We have a special guest writer and Object Orientated Ontology theorist Graham Harman answering a few of our questions. Along with featured artists, Pippa Ward and Tsibi Geva. As well as many other artists work and written features, don’t forget to check out our blog for extra content each day…
A big thank you to all those that have worked with us on this issue. Enjoy this bumper issue and have a great Christmas.
Nichola and Jenna
Artist name@ Lorraine Cooke
Title: Urban Recall
Media: Acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Description: 'Urban Recall' comments on the built environment, posing questions of how we perceive our immediate environments and how the environment in turn morphs in construction to echo our collective sense of Modernity. If ones perceptions of the environment are in any way inhibited, it may be a preoccupation with our own existence which in turn negates the imminent uncertainty of our environment and therefore our future. If 'the City' is regarded as the pinnacle of vicissitude and industrial progress how do these values shape our perceptions of our surrounding environments and in turn determine the necessity for change? The imagery in this painting references visual reflections, used as a metaphor for the impermanence of the constructed landscape which is essentially the manifestation of our aspirations and a major contributing factor to the fragility of our current climate.
Instagram: @lorraine_cooke1
Artist name: Sam Lee
Title: Nature Unwrapped
Media: photograph/ installation
Description: I made this series as a response from 2007 -2011 to the growing threat of plastic in our environment. It is an abstract in concept but mixed with anxiety about re-cycling, and climate change. It involved a lot of shoots to find good photographs out in the landscape so took a long time to finish.
Instagram: samleeartfire3
Artist name: NINO MEMANISHVILI
Title: On Fire
Media: Graphic work
Description: It has become clear that climate change is a subject that touches on economics, politics, the food we eat, the way we live, the health of Earth’s habitats and well-being. I tried to show in the presented work my modest protest highlighting the importance of the subject.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/memanishvilinino/
Artist name: Sara Jolly
Title: Stained Shadows (2)
Media: Acrylic on Canvas
Description: Stained Shadows (2) grapples with the fleeting sense of nature, depicting solely the shadow-being of an plant. It warns our society that if we do not overcome the Otherness and sense of Ownership we have towards our natural world, our environment will be just a shadow of its former self. We must regain respect and strive to protect our nature, as it is protecting us continually.
Instagram: sarajollyart
Artist name: Anne Krinsky
Title: The Ephemera Scrolls
Media: Archival Digital Prints on Platinum Etching Paper (Installation Detail 4 of 10 Scrolls)
Description: I am working on an international project about vulnerable wetlands and climate change in a range of river and coastal locations. During a 2019 Residency at Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany, I photographed the River Naab as water levels dropped during the hottest June on record, revealing tree roots and spawning algae islands. Incorporating this documentation, I worked with projection, photography and digital print to create "The Ephemera Scrolls", an installation of ten large-scale scrolls in St. Augustine’s Tower Hackney, for the 2019 show, "Reading Stones: Anne Krinsky I Carol Wyss I Susan Eyre. "
Instagram: annekrinsky
Artist name: Helen Grundy
Title: They Die, We Die
Media: Digital collage
Description: This piece was inspired by photographs I looked at, during lockdown, of the 1918 flu pandemic. I wanted to blend elements from 1918 and add elements that reference the climate crisis we are facing now. I show nurses and stretcher bearers rescuing moths, flies and spiders. The current pandemic is rooted in the effects of humans destroying the natural world. In my piece I wanted to show that animals, no matter how small, are all an important part of the eco system and need protecting just as much as humans.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/grundyhelen03
Artist name: Chris Marshall
Title: Marker
Media: Sculpture/Installation. Timber. Printed sheets.
Description: Normally marker gauge boards are seen in rivers, canals, lakes and harbours showing water levels. Here they are transported to a high street in order to raise people’s awareness of the threat of flooding caused by climate change. Six marker boards were installed in and around Deptford, SE London, as part of Deptford X Festival with the intention of bringing the potential devastation closer to people’s everyday lives.
During installation much controversy was created with people expressing deep concern.
Instagram: @chrismarshall9833
Artist name: Marina Burana
Title: Bloom
Media: Barkcloth (Paper Mulberry Tree), Natural earth pigment (rock) and Chinese ink
Description: This piece was made with the inner bark of the tree Paper Mulberry. You separate the bark from the tree, scrape the outer bark and use the inner one. You leave it in water for two days then you start beating with wooden beaters to expand the fibres. This beating/re-drying/re-soaking process took months. After that, I used rocks, which I grinded and added water to, to be able to paint on the barkcloth. This is all natural. I know where the materials I use come from and where end up. I was part of the whole process.
Instagram: @marinaburana
Artist name: Lewis Andrews
Title: The Progressive Decline of The Frozen World #1
Media: Melted Ice, Indian Ink on Watercolour Paper.
Description: A Reflection on the fate of our frozen environments due to climate change through the action of melting ice making the drawing. Unless action is taken the planet will suffer the same unfortunate fate of losing all its ice. Habitats and wildlife lost. Our home which Carl Sagan referred to as a Pale Blue Dot in the cosmos, is melting. Dying.
Instagram: @lewis_andrews_art
Artist name: Diego Orihuela
Title: Alternative Strata I
Media: Video Installation
Description: The romantic vision of nature has allowed the management of the economic consumption of the territory and its non-human inhabitants. When environmental devastation meets the aesthetic fetish, the history of the ever green natural knowledge becomes a container for colonial violence and artificial suspension.
Instagram: @dgorhl
Artist name: Evie Banks
Title: Autumn Series V
Media: Acrylic paint and graphic pen on card
Description: My practice usually focuses on the natural environment of St Ives through reference to phenomenology and colour theory. However, with lockdown restrictions it has meant I can no longer travel to gather inspiration. For me this has highlighted the effect it can have on mental health not being able to connect with nature and has further highlighted my appreciation for the beauty of the everyday and the fragility of the ecosystem.
Instagram: eviebanksfineart
Artist name: Jennifer Weston
Title: Erasure
Media: Digital
Description: When the sea levels rise these houses, land, people round here will be no more. This glacier formed river valley will be part of the sea. Erased.
I cannot tell you how often I ponder this, and my mixed feelings about relocating. This is the region of my birth, born and bred; yet I'd feel safer on higher ground. Preservation verses familiarity, nostalgia, roots, home, deeply saddens my heart.
Instagram: @jenniferwestonuk
Artist name: Rosalind Lowry
Title: Predator Fence
Media: Installation
Description: A temporary land art installation created as part of a residency for the Alaska State Government Parks in 2019. The work is based on the protection of the environment and when is the right time for us to step in to help. The work is part of a series in an art trail I created to encourage park users to engage with the environment. 2ft x 2ft in size.
Instagram: rosalindlowry
Artist name: Ivi Michaelidou
Title: Untitled
Media: Sculpture
Description: A collection of plastic objects/packaging from my daily life put together in sculptures using resin with combination of drawings and bits from nature. By gathering these materials and putting them together I aimed to explore ways in which leftovers from my routine could be put together - also representing where they could one day end up in.
Instagram: @hebe______
Artist name: Victoria Trondsen
Title: Polluted Photography Dress
Media: Photography
Description: This dress refers to the damage and pollution of the fashion industry. The dress is exclusively created out of recycled photographs where the photos show images of nature in black to symbolise what had to die in order to make dresses. The origami animals at the top represents the animals who has to die for fashion for their fur, feathers or simply just by the pollution the industry creates.
Instagram: victrondsen_photography
Artist name: Graham Patterson
Title: (re) purpose
Media: Mark-making / assemblage
Description: Plastic debris salvaged from the Northumberland shoreline; re-purposed as mark-making devices. The accumulative nature of the marks allude to the never-ending glut of man-made material washed ashore daily. One of several processes used in a project with school children to highlight the detrimental impact mass-produced plastics have on the marine environment.
Instagram: G.P.7.6
Artist name: Elephantman
Title: Elephant
Media: Concrete
Description: This one of the elephants I put out on the streets as part of a campaign to raise awareness about our relationship to the animals we share this planet with. It is my contention that animals are non-human persons, rather than the 'things' they currently are. As mere things they have no rights, yet they are fellow Earthlings more valuable to our ecosystem than humans.
Instagram: elephantmansculpture
Artist name: Vardit Goldner
Title: Ferme des Refusés
Media: Photography
Description: As the world confronts a global pandemic that is impacting all aspects of life, other crises might seem less concrete. But the climate and ecological emergency, as one of them, is around the corner and meaningful climate action has to be taken. Livestock and its byproducts produce 51% of the greenhouse gases, so a vegan world can help in reducing global warming and climate crisis. Thus, the immense suffering of the animals used in the industry will stop as well.
The photos were taken in a liberation farm that used to house animals rescued from the industry.
Instagram: @varditgoldner
Artist name: Fred Fabre
Title: Final Party
Media: Oil
Description: Final Party is inspired by various pre-Renaissance paintings of judgment day. A boat, with an extinction rebellion flag flapping on its forestay, is sailing over a sea of people who could be climate refugees, protesters or both. In the foreground some of the people are drinking, dancing oblivious to the panic in the background.
The work illustrate how ill prepared humans are to what may come next.
Instagram: @drawlogia
Artist name: Deborah Gardner
Title: Comet Tree
Media: sculpture
Description: Comet Tree (2019) acts in many ways as a warning, inspired by Jon Lomberg 's science fiction painting depicting the visionary world of future environments. Freeman Dyson, the theoretical physicist posited the idea that tree-like genetically modified plants can be grown in comets using photosynthesis from solar energy. The possibility of imagined future outer space biospheres triggers senses of awe and wonder, but this is laden with anthropogenic guilt at the thought of seeking future worlds as a response to human caused climate disasters on earth.
Artist name: Lydia Halcrow
Title: Ghost Plastics
Media: Plastic Debris, Somerset Satin, Carbon
Description: The work is created through a series of walks along the Taw Estuary collecting each piece of washed up debris along the strandline that I follow as I walk. The unfolding climate crisis is overwhelming in scale and enormity, the small scale embodied action of bending down to untangle each strand of plastic from the bundles of seaweed is a small act of care and coping that aims to unsettle my relationship with this place and to develop an awareness of the impact of human debris in Western Capitalist consumption is having on our places and the more than human world.
Instagram: lydiahalcrow
Artist name: Charley Duffy
Title: Fast Fashion
Media: Digital Collage
Description: This collage was created while I was making work for an exhibition at Psyche clothing store, Teesside. I was thinking a lot about fast fashion and the effects on the environment, I thought making an unusual and humorous collage would help to grab the attention of audiences to help them learn about the huge pressure that non-sustainable clothing brands are putting on our ecosystems.
Instagram: @charleyduffyart
Artist name: Katie Hallam
Title: Techo Fossil
Media: Sculpture
Description: I explore the idea of the legacy our digital culture will leave on the earth through combinations of experimentation creating hybrid manifestations through sculpture and digital materiality. Like alchemy, specific works connect new media technology with archaic power. These ‘digital-mineral hybrids’ are hypnotic works that sit against a background of open, natural and urban landscapes as I tease the question of a glitch in nature.
Artist name: Liz Clifford
Title: Becoming Geology
Media: steel, detritus and moss
Description: This piece was photographed on the site where the contents of the gabion structure were collected by the artist - an ancient byway in The South Downs National Park frequented by dirt bike and 4 x 4 drivers. It is arranged in the proportion 1 part biomass, the moss layer, to 10 parts technosphere, the man-made detritus that pollutes the landscape. This proportion is discussed by geologist Jan Zalasiewicz in his essay "The Anthropocene Square Meter", a visual metaphor for the scale of human impact on the environment.
Instagram: liz_clifford_art
Artist name: Nerissa Cargill Thompson
Title: Because the Straw was the Problem
Media: mixed media sculpture (Embellished recycled textiles cast with cement in found plastic cup plus original paper straw.)
Description: Highlighting the small steps being made regarding the issue of plastic pollution. The straw may have been switched from plastic to paper but casting gives this waste a physical presence that mirrors the ecological impact, emphasising the bulk of single use plastic that remains. Coastal inspired embroidery shows it subsumed into the natural world around us.
Instagram: @nerissact
Artist name: Alexandra Buxbaum
Title: Hawaii- This is Not Paradise
Media: photography
Description: Hawaii evokes images of a remote, pristine Pacific Paradise with beautiful beaches and biodiversity. The island’s unique location has now become home to an unwelcome guest; plastic debris washing up in vast quantities.
Hawaii is just east of the Great Pacific garbage patch and is at the center of ocean currents that send plastic from all over the world to its shores, some of it decades old. Hawaii’s marine life has been hot especially hard by all the plastic ocean debris, abandoned fishing nets ensnare humpback wales, turtles, and fishermen routinely catch fish with bodies filled with plastic. The chemical makeup of plastic means it will never entirely go away. Without drastic changes made around the consumption and production of plastic, Hawaii will keep on bearing the brunt of worldwide plastic use.
By 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean and it will keep forming into “garbage patches” that will cover large swarths of the Pacific Ocean.
Instagram: @buxbaumphoto
Artist name: Vannie Gama
Title: 100 Species of Brazilian fauna
Media: Watercolour on paper
Description: The ''100 Species of Brazilian fauna'' was a 100 paintings series made during the 2020 lockdown, through 8-month-research combining ecology and visual arts. The series intention is to highlight biodiversity, where most of the represented species are endangered and urban species found in Brazil.
The communication of the importance of conservation is a challenging topic in what concerns to break off the aesthetic vision of nature as an isolated topic to an intrinsic part of human society.
Instagram: @vanniegama
Artist name: Dominique Cro
Title: Dead Leather
Media: 35mm film photograph
Description: Waste is a key area of research in my practice and I frequent landfill sites, recycling centres and scrap yards to document what is being thown away and what happens to it next. 135 million tonnes of rubbish goes to landfill every year worldwide, this series documents the stages of waste, from photographing the contents of our rubbish bins to crumpled cars to be recycled.
This photograph was taken in Vietnam whilst documenting attitudes towards production and it’s darker counterpart waste. With the planet’s ongoing population growth, pollution of the atmosphere and rise in throwaway products, consume responsibly shouldn’t be a concept largely associated with our favourite poisons.
Instagram: dominiquecro
Artist name: Eva Joy
Title: Regenerate
Media: Collage and charcoal on card
Description: Sometimes I wish I could hypnotise the people in power who are digging us deeper and deeper into the chasm of Climate Catastrophe. A regeneration of the human psyche to place more value in the sustainable and less in the immediate, more in the kind and less in the selfish is necessary to avert our course but how is the question that troubles me.
Instagram: @evajoy_art
Artist name: Jessica Sanders
Title: World Map of Climate Tipping Points
Media: Illustration/ Worksheet
Description: Transforming our planet's destabilizing network of living systems, this is a map caricature aimed at addressing the climate emergency towards a younger audience. Personifying areas of ecological crisis into Weather Monsters, Sleeping Giants & Politician Gremlins; this functions as an interactive worksheet that can be folded into a physical globe. I made this for my final hand in at CSM when I graduated from my bedroom.
Instagram: jessica_sander
Artist name: Mary Pedicini
Title: Writing Desk (Fragment)
Media: Oak, Soy Wax, Radiator Filter Paper, Teabags, Graphite, Metal, Stones, Ceramic Shard.
Description: I want to explain the world again, from blank. Like a child, or those naturalists of old before our collective modern understandings and instruments, I want to construct a system from only what I can see. Stones obscured and revealed, objects contained, photographed and rubbed: I try in vain to capture and categorize nature.
Instagram: @marypedicini
Artist name: Wan-Ru Lin
Title: Ouch! What's That ??? Pink Plastic Bag?
Media: Digital Photography
Description: The Regent Canal in London can be a picturesque place to savour the time. Photographer tend to skilfully hide the fact that litter is “everywhere” in the canal. However, I think it’s time for me to revel both the beauty and the ugly.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rurubombltd/
