Calling for Action.

This week I attended a fascinating conference hosted by Surrey Hills Arts at The University of Surrey in Guildford. The event brought together artists who work with and in the landscape to present their work and to tackle the question “How can we inspire action?” to tackle the climate and biodiversity emergency.

The first presentation by artist duo Ackroyd & Harvey focussed on their work as artist/activists. Their recent work has required collaboration with institutions like Tate Modern and Somerset House and also with many individuals. In 2019 they co-founded Culture Declares Emergency – a movement of cultural workers dedicated to truth-telling, action-taking and justice-seeking on the climate emergency – providing the grass coats worn by the performers at the launch of the organisation. Grass is a material they return to again and again. Photosynthesis is the method by which they make images, allowing light onto the grass seed as it sprouts in some areas and not others, in much the same way as developing an analogue photograph. It is a symbolic material, a metaphor for nature and making use of it is an acknowledgement that grasses and humans are inextricably linked. Their most recent work was made in collaboration with Writers Rebel, a part of Extinction Rebellion. A large grass banner of text by writer and activist Ben Okri was grown during June 2021 in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern and then born to the banks of the Thames where it was floated in a ceremony accompanied by speeches and music. This event demonstrated that art has a role to play in making the issue of the climate emergency as visible as possible, and artists must collaborate with others to achieve that visibility.

Daro Montag is an artist and Professor of Art & Environment at Falmouth University working with natural organisms and producing charcoal to bury in the ground. This action is one that has been practised all over the world as a method of soil improvement for centuries. Although cutting down and burning trees feels wrong, if burnt without oxygen the carbon in the wood is not released into the atmosphere but trapped in the resulting charcoal. When the charcoal is then buried in the ground it is trapped – a cottage industry scale carbon sequestration and soil improvement system. Daro’s presentation video showed his charcoal burning process and whilst it was playing he began setting out bags of charcoal in front of the audience. About 8 kg of carbon is produced daily by every UK citizen. This was represented by a group of eight 1kg sacks of Daro’s home produced Rane-char wheeled onto the stage in a cabinet. In theory one would need to make and bury this much daily to off-set one’s carbon footprint. Sixty 100gm bags, one for each audience member, were then placed on a shelf along the back of the stage. At the end of the 20 minute presentation the audience was invited to take one of these small bags each and scatter it on the soil outside, thus off-setting their carbon footprint for that last 20 minutes. This performance and audience participation provided an elegant visual demonstration of the enormity of the task before us as well as a simple action that can help. An artist’s drawing material put to use in an unexpected way.

Sculptor Will Nash showed us his habitable public sculpture projects and talked through their evolution, involving local communities, including his piece called Optohedron for Surrey Hills Arts near Newlands Corner. This piece has a steel frame but is packed with coppiced logs to form a habitat for forest creatures. The approach of combining a sculpture with a wildlife habitat was first explored by the artist whilst working for Warnham Nature Reserve, Horsham. The cairn-like structure of reclaimed Horsham stone that references the local industrial archeology evolved in the making to become a bat bothy with an interior cave-like space and narrow entrances. The siting of the work next to a pond is also important for these creatures and the artist was assisted by volunteers to build the piece on site. Between working on The Bat Bothy and Optohedron Will Nash has also developed sculptural swift towers in Norwich and Shalford. These structures must be at least 6 metres tall so that the swift chicks can take flight safely and include technology to attract the birds – a solar powered MP3 player relaying swift calls. The works all use mathematical principles and a collaborative brief to achieve engaging and multi-purpose results.

Andrea Gregson talked us through the gestation of her two public sculptures Checkpoint 1 & 2, each the culmination of a residency, one on the island of Fyn in Denmark, and the other in Grizedale Forest, Cumbria. Both works focus attention on the particular landscapes in which they are sited by literally requiring the viewer to adopt a specific viewpoint and at the same time present facts about the landscape that are not apparent on the surface. The viewer is invited into the sculpture and from there can view the landscape through a set of holes. In the interior the artist’s drawings are displayed that reflect on the research undertaken during the residency. The industrial past of the area is referenced along with current juxtapositions of roads, power supplies and the tourist industry. The second part of Andrea’s presentation involved drawing our attention to the work of the late Gustav Metzger with whom she had worked in 2015. His call for a day of action by artists entitled Remember Nature on 4th November 2015 is being relaunched by herself and fellow artist/curator Jo Joelson. There will be a day of action across the arts on 4th November 2022 in partnership with the Gustav Metzger Foundation, Hauser & Wirth Somerset, UCA Farnham and Dartington Arts School. There is a webpage on which to register your interest as either an individual or organisation and propose an event, action, performance or artwork for the day that promotes the message Remember Nature.

All the speakers made use of documentary video to support their material, but the most powerful was the one of Gustav Metzger appealing to his audience in 2015. “We live in societies suffocating in waste” he says “Our task is to remind people of the richness and complexity in nature; to protect nature as far as we can and by doing so art will enter new territories that are inherently creative. The aim is to create a mass movement across the arts to ward off extinction.”