But a closer look at these images reveals that all is not as it seems.

The images are digital composites compiled using photographs of garbage dumps. Large mounds of garbage are covered in sheets of green protective nets.  The artist photographs these mounds and then re-assembles the images to create these bucolic landscapes. Viewed quickly or from afar, these are beautiful landscape images. Closer to, they are mounds of garbage.

As China undergoes rapid industrialization and urbanization, these huge mounds of garbage are generated everywhere with significant damage to the environment.  Yao Lu has inverted the historical process. While China turns its landscape into one huge garbage dump, the artist, alchemist like, has turned garbage into the beautiful, romanticized Chinese landscape which is rapidly disappearing.

For a different take on the relationship between beauty and garbage, see the work of Edward Burtynsky.

For a closer look at Yao Lu’s images in larger format, look here.

I have been wondering how long it would take for the biggest environmental disaster in history to inspire the creation of some art. Digital artist Ubermorgen has created a series of works entitled Deep Horizon.

25 Million Liters

The images are created from photographs of the oil spill itself, digitally manipulated to create abstract images with various liquefied effects.  Some images (above and below) are part of the “Aerial Series” and, to my eye, manage to convey a sense of the overwhelming immensity of the disaster that is truly frightening.

17 Million Liters

The second “Liquid Series” plays with color and light. Here all evidence that this is a major industrial, environmental and human catastrophe disappear and we are left with bright, happy images that disguise the reality of what is going on. The disconnect between the feeling created by some of these images and the image titles could not be greater.

2 Million Liters

Other Art

Of course the disaster has inspired the more usual forms of artistic endeavours.

From political cartoons…….. (see here for more political cartoons)

Matt Davies political cartoon

To take-offs of what now seems like a laughably cynical BP “all green together” logo and corporate image.

The background to some of her themes has been explored before but her work, evolving over a number of years, builds, layer upon layer, to create an ever more cohesive vision of where our current trajectories may lead us in the future. Concepts of a living environment that becomes increasingly hostile through desertification or rising waters are nothing new.  However, Mattingly develops her fantasy world further, having all but destroyed their surrounding environment, we see images of a nomadic people living in ‘wearable homes’ crammed with all manner of modern technology. Individuality is eroded and homogenization is the rule. Mattingly’s nomadic people look bemused. They seem surprised that the world around them has somewhow disappeared. They wear their beloved hi-technology but they have nowhere to go.

We can clearly see how this vision of the future is an almost straight line extrapolation of today’s world with its near deification of technological advance and its increasing disdain for the natural world.

Mattingly develops these future visions in extreme detail and then shows us glimpses of them through constructed photographic images, videos and drawings.  Her work becomes thoughtful and provocative when viewed as a complete body of work.

Her web site (www.marymattinglyglobal.org) is intense.  Full of a combination of dense (and occasionally abstruse) text, images, drawings, videos and external links it creates an impression of an artist deeply, almost obsessively, absorbed in the detailed creation of her world of fantasy.

As part of her detailed development of scenarios of future living, Mattingly also founded the Waterpod – “a sustainable, sculptural art and technology habitat, with four artists living on and off it, generating food, water, and power in a contained and self-sufficient environment.”

Mary Mattingly is patiently constructing detailed images of a future that, if one has the patience to persist and work through her body of work, leads us to question the wisdom of our current social, technological and environmental trajectories.