This week The Guardian asked artists and writers to design images of money that would be appropriate for our times. As one can imagine, numerous themes have been explored by the artists concerned. John Gray (above) and Jonathan Frantzen (below) both take up the theme of endangered species, highlighting that, once gone, they will never return.

Others make broader social commentaries. Alasdair Gray (below) highlights the fact that, in the developed world, we have far more money than we need suggesting that the accumulation of money has gone far beyond satisfying our basic needs. Anne Enright (below that) designs the new currency for Ireland when it tumbles out of the Euro – a return to Celtic values with Yeats’s lines as the reminder that “we have fed the heart on fantasies”.

But my favourite of the lot is the simple, pointed and harsh commentary from British artist Tracy Emin.

Hermaphrodite Polar Bear

Gary Hume is a successful British artist who does not usually engage with environmental issues. He became involved with Cape Farewell and created some artworks in an attempt to engage with the issues.  As reported in an article in The Guardian, he found this a challenge:

“How do you depict global catastrophe?” he says. “I’m too selfish to describe the world’s dilemma, so I describe my own paltry dilemma of what it’s like to be alive.”

The image above – Hermaphrodite Polar Bear – is intended to bring attention to the significant changes affecting life on Earth as a result of damaging human activity. “The Industrialist” (below) is a lead tracing of smoke coming out of an industrial chimney. He describes it as an epitaph for industrialists.

But Hume is not really convinced by his own work. First of all he is wary of artists’ fascination with death, global catastrophe, etc. Depicting disaster is maybe the easy path to take. But most revealing is his take on the trip to the Arctic with Cape Farewell. Clearly he found the trip beautiful and was no doubt saddened by the prospect of the damage being done by climate change but found it ‘hard to relate to my life’.

So here’s the question: is all the talk of ‘global catastrophe’ making the problem seem so huge and insurmountable that it starts to be feel totally of reach – impossible for people to relate to their life? Is one possible result that people simply shut these issues out of their minds – the only coping mechanism they may have left to get on with their life?

Is it time for a new narrative?

I spent my days enjoying some wonderful art, being astonished by art that was bland or crass – or both – and looking for art that engaged in the issues related to our environment. There was none that I could find. In this major art event where contemporary artists engage with the issues of the day, art engaged with environmental issues simply did not exist. Why?

Maybe we should just face the facts – we are being supremely unsuccessful in getting people engaged in environmental issues beyond the level where they politely acknowledge that there seems to be an issue and then swiftly move on to what, for them, are more pressing issues. All research confirms that environmental issues are low down on the list of people’s concerns and shrinking in relevance.

The most impressive installation in the Biennale was, by far, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Crystal of Resistance for the Swiss pavilion. The artist has created a web site about the installation.  If you are so inclined (and, in my desperation, I was), you can interpret part of Hirschhorn’s installation as containing an environmental message.

For the pavilion, the artist created a massive and almost overwhelming installation. Masses of discarded objects – TV sets, mobile telephones, plastic chairs, and so forth were covered in masking tape and assembled, seemingly haphazardly, throughout the pavilion. Other spaces contained other paraphernalia of modern life – magazines, car tyres, mannequins, discarded drinks cans and so forth.  There were even  taxidermied animals seemingly surrounded by the detritus of modern living.

Finally, there were arrays of photographs of what we may call ‘modern life’. Among these some of the most shocking images of war, oppression and human devastation.

The installation was tightly packed and visually overwhelming. One had to carefully walk through for fear of knocking something over. The experience felt similar to being in an overstocked and totally disorganized junk shop with no clues or guidance as to how one should proceed, what to look at in what order and what to make of it all.

This is the cleverness of the installation. Hirschhorn’s idea is that we are, today, surrounded by visual, auditory and material stimuli that are almost overwhelming. What do we actually ‘see’ when we go about our daily business? Maybe all we see is that which confirms our own world view. We ignore or act as mere spectators for most of what goes on around us – including the pictures of horror that the artist strung up in his installation and which most people looked at, no doubt found disturbing to various degrees but then just moved on to the next visual stimulus and got on with their lives.

For me, desperate to find some semblance of environmental engagement in the whole of the Biennale experience, Hirshhorn’s installation made powerful statements about our consumption, our unsustainable way of life, even the threat to other forms of life. But I saw all that because I wanted to. I was looking for it and therefore I saw it. The artist did not show it to me.

Of the millions who visited the installation, how many saw and took away an environmental message? How many even noticed or lingered next to the taxidermied marmot or eagle? If the research about environmental concerns is right, then it will be very, very few. There are many things that one can see and read into Hirschhorn’s installation and the reality is that very few people are attuned to seeing an environmental message. And even for those who did, they no doubt reflected briefly and then moved on to the nearest, chic Venetian restaurant where they ordered the deliciously grilled fish of the day – most likely a highly endangered species.

For many people it is difficult to understand, let alone empathize with, technical statements like “loss of habitat”. This advertizing campaign from the charity Born Free aims to bring this issue into the more human terms of ‘homelessness’.

Using images of animals placed in the context of human homelessness, the campaign tries to make clear that ‘loss of habitat’ represents the same type of disenfranchisement seen in people who have lost their homes or have otherwise been rendered homeless.

A clever approach that moves away from the distancing and often incomprehensible techno-speak of the conservation community to frame the issue in human terms and, hopefully, make it more relevant. It would be useful if some information were to be collected on the impact of this creative campaign.

WHAT IS MISSING?

What Is Missing? is the title of what has been labeled as Maya Lin’s last memorial. The aim is to draw attention to the environmental issues that are facing us all today – from global warming to the sixth mass extinction of species that is currently ongoing.

The Listening Cone. California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco

In trying to bring attention to environmental issues, Lin is also re-defining the meaning of ‘Monument’.  Rather than a single structure in a single place, Lin is re-defining a monument to be a series of permanent or ephemeral structures or installations spanning the globe and linked by a common mission and a common message.

The Listening Cone (above) was one of the first installations.  A giant cone allows visitors to look into the wide end and see a series of looped videos accompanied by sounds of the marine environment – the natural sounds of the oceans.  It allows me “to create a scene that makes people realize how loud the ocean is for any sonar-dependent marine animal,” says Lin.

The Empty Room is a traveling installation that allows visitors to catch and hold projected images in their hands, each image saying something about endangered species and environmental degradation. 

Lin is planning many projects using many different media in different locations – and even virtual installations.  Future projects include ‘a sound-only sculpture’, video billboards, a peeking wall that allows us to peek through holes at video installations and even virtual media that can be downloaded onto mobile devices. To get an overview of this ambitious project visit the project’s web site.

Maya Lin has embarked on a large and ambitious vision intended to bring environmental issues to as many people as possible using modern media and formats that capture our imagination while constituting a call to action.  What Is Missing? is a work of contemporary art that, in true post-modern tradition, challenges established norms while working to change our outlook.

Let us hope that it is only some of her installations that prove ephemeral  rather than the species and ecosystems that she is trying to help protect.

How and why would one create an underwater scutpture park?

Sculptor and scuba diver Jason de Caires Taylor has, so far, created a total of 65 underwater sculptural installations in Mexico and across the Caribbean. While seeming somewhat surreal, these sculptures have a very practical purpose. They are intended to ‘spread the load’ currently borne by endangered local coral reefs by attracting divers to view these sculptural installations instead.  In additions, over time they form artificial reefs – new habitats where new coral can grow to form new coral reefs with their attendant value in supporting underwater life around them.

A video (below) shows the installation of the latest work in Cancun, Mexico.

Jason’s work may be an ideal example of how art can help conservation efforts.  His art not only draws attention to the issues but makes a very practical and tangible contribution both to conservation and coral reef restoration efforts and to the local tourist economy.  If only we could come up with more examples of this type of art.

Amazonia is an exhibit of work commissioned by the museum and shown as part of the Year of Biodiversity – 2010. The artists, Lucy + Jorge Orta have put together an eclectic collection of work based on a trip to the Amazon organized by Cape Farewell.  The exhibit contains sculpture, photography, video and installation.

For me, the most interesting pieces were some of the sculptures and the video.  The sculptures used bones and an extinct ‘elephant bird’ egg to prepare casts in iridescent aluminium (above) and Limoges porcelain (below). Viewing the decorated porcelain sculptures in particular, I wondered what they might say about our relationship with nature.  Is this a reflection of natural beauty cast in a material that we also consider culturally beautiful?  Or do they highlight our ‘use’ of nature – our appreciation of nature only in so much as we can turn it into a fetish object, a mere decoration or amusement? Do we appreciate nature for its own sake or only for its utility – one utility being its transformation into to a beautiful cultural artifact?

The twin, large scale video screens were also mesmerizing. The videos themselves were atmospheric, a feeling enhanced by the poetic narrative of Mario Petrucci (see short extract of the video here). It’s a shame that the video could not seem to avoid lapsing occasionally into spewing facts and figures and into the idolization of science.

The exhibit was an ambitious project.  It’s breadth was such that it is would put strain on any one pair of artists to deliver the expected span of content across many media. In my opinion, this strain started to show in some of the pieces. The photographs of amazonian plants, were well executed and brought a glossy juxtaposition to the coarser feel generated by the plant ‘sculptures’ rendered in sewn cloth. But the photographs did not really bring us an approach that we have not seen before in many, many photographs of exotic plants. The Madre de Dios ark (below) was, for my taste, a little too obvious. A Noah’s Ark of animals with life preservers piled underneath does not leave much to the imagination. The use of plastic animal models in the ark tended to give it all a bit of a down market, toy-like feel. But maybe my reaction was conditioned by comparison to some work by Félix Reyes that I have recently seen and that, while also using the idea of massed figures, had a quality of execution that left you breathless.

Madre de Dios

Amazonia is an ambitious project well-executed.  The artists successfully managed to produce a large scale exhibit that spanned many media and that brought to life the varied wonders of the amazon. They did so in an eclectic form that is far from usual and that represents a refreshing change from yet another nature documentary (yawn). The museum must be congratulated on commissioning this work and on having the vision to create a contemporary arts programme to sit alongside its more didactic, scientific work. I hope that other museums of natural history might take a lead from this programme and start something similar – though I suspect that we may have to wait for improved economic conditions to see that happening.

In a unique activist, social work of art, The Ultimate Holding Company, a co-operative based in Manchester, England, has just completed a project entitled ext Inked.  They created a set of drawings individually illustrating one hundred of the most endangered species in the British Isles.  They then asked for for 100 volunteers each to have one of these drawings tattooed on their skin thereby becoming ‘permanent ambassadors’ of that species.

Ink Drawn Images of 100 Endangered Species

It turns out that the organizers received large numbers of applications from volunteers of which they could only select 100. Many of these applications contained heartfelt messages expressing a wish to get involved in a lifelong conservation campaign.

The selected volunteers were all tattooed in November this year – the bicentennial year of Charles Darwin’s birthday.

Volunteer being tattoed

Not only was this a bold and highly ambitious undertaking but some may be surprised by the large number of volunteers who demonstrated a passion for conserving the biodiversity of their country.  For many, the extinction of species and the inexorable destruction of biodiversity are abstract concepts of little relevance in their everyday lives. This successful experiment shows that there are many who care about this issue with a lifelong passion.

A 'Permanent Ambassador' is created

The Ultimate Holding Company describes itself as “a co-operative exploring the modern city through critical cross disciplinary art and design practice. We specialise in turning artist-led concepts into ethical design solutions, exclusively for organisations driven by their values not their profits.” They have undertaken a significant number of projects with many clients and partners.