Art Matters: Illuminating Contemporary ArtShepparton Art Museum2015

LECTURE 5: ART, PLACE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Albrecht Dürer The Large Piece of Turf 1503

Henrique Oliveira Baitogogo 2013Installation at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Earth Rise, taken from Apollo 8, 24 Dec 1968

Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (excerpt), 1994

Robert Smithson: Entropy

‘Art can become a resource that mediates between the ecologist and the industrialist. Ecology and industry are not one-way streets, rather they should be crossroads’ - Robert Smithson (Untitled 1971)

Robert Smithson Asphalt Rundown 1969

Joseph Beuys, 7000 Oaks, 1982 Documenta 7, Kassel, Germany

Cai Guo-Qiang The Century with Mushroom Clouds:

Project for the Twentieth Century (Salt Lake) 1996

Realised at Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty on 15 February 1996

Michael Heiser Double Negative 1970

Michael Heiser Double Negative 1970

Rikrit Tiravanija The Land, Thailand 1998

Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969–2009 (London, 2009)

Earth: Art of a Changing World (Royal Academy)

Weather Report: Art and Climate Change (Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado 2007)

Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change (Natural History Museum, London 2006)

Heat: Art and Climate Change in Melbourne (RMIT Gallery, 2008)

Sensing Nature (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo 2011)

David Buckland’s Cape Farewell Project started in 2001

Shiro Takatani Ice Core 2005

Nature-Culture Divide

Angela Valamanesh, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, 2007SAM Collection

Simon Faithful 0.00 Navigation 2009, 55min video

David Burrow, Mirage Project [iceberg], Federation Square 2012

David Burrow, Mirage Project [iceberg], Palimpsest Biennale 2013

Kosuke Ikeda Rain/Desert Island 2010

Fujiko Nakaya and Shiro Takatani Cloud Forest 2010

Fujiko Nakaya and Shiro Takatani Cloud Forest 2010

Olfaur ElliasonThe Weather Project 2003Tate Turbine Hall

Weather Report: Art and Climate Change 2007 (L. Lippard) Mary Miss

Penny Byrne, The Four Horsemen of the 21st Century Apocalypse(Water Scarcity, Peak Oil, Food Shortages, Over population), 2009

Edward Burtynsky, 'Super Pit #4, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia', 2007

Alan Sonfist Time Landscape 1965-2005

• The divide between nature and culture has come to be seen as a false dichotomy

• Humans are part of the natural world• Understand of nature comes through cultural interpretation

• Environmental art has been made throughout history, but with different concerns and interests depending on the era

• Social, political and scientific shifts in the 1960s and ‘70s changed the way we view and understand the environment

• Artists working with the environment haven’t all been environmentalists• Different approaches to the environment depending on the

interests and approach of the artist• Though many artists have engaged with the environment to

express ecological and political concerns

Some Key Ideas from this lecture