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.

David Buckland: The Great White Sale. These images are made in a short window of time when the power of the video projector matches the light of dawn, when there is both message and ice. This fleeting moment of human excess is so short, two hundred years, but for the glacier it is barely a single breath taken.

Cape Farewell has already organized a number of art exhibitions as a result of the works created during the expeditions. The latest traveling exhibit – u-n-f-o-l-d opens in Chicago on March 16th. According to David Buckland, “We intend to communicate through art works our understanding of the changing climate on a human scale, so that our individual lives can have meaning in what is a global problem.”

This blog has reviewed the work of a number of artists that have collaborated with Cape Farewell. These include Lemn Sissay, Iain McEwan, and Lucy + Jorge Orta. Buckland also curated the highly successful EARTH exhibit at the Royal Academy in 2009.

Adriane Colburn: Forest for the Trees is a meditation on the complex relationship between nature and industry; sustained land vs. commodified land; matter on the surface of the earth vs. the matter below ground; the morphing of the forest into an industrial landscape; and the fine lines between use and exploitation.

Cape Farewell is probably the most important undertaking to date that, in an organized and concerted way, engages the arts in issues of climate change and the environment.

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.