Visual Arts

VISUAL ARTS

VISUAL ARTS

Painters and sculptors are finding astonishing ways to visualize climate change like the huge site specific installations from Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson’s work which involved transporting 12 blocks of ice that came from free-floating icebergs from the Greenland ice sheet, then arranging them in a clock formation to indicate the passing of time. The ice sculptures were left to slowly melt. 

A New York artist, Eve Mosher walked almost 70 miles across Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, painting a chalk line showing the likely location of frequent flooding if sea levels continued to rise. And, then there is The Birth of Venus but in this 21st century version, artist Chris Jordan replaces Botticelli’s paints with 240,000 plastic bags, equal to the number consumed throughout the world every ten seconds.

Louis Schwartzberg is a photographer who creates moving images celebrating the earth, much the way our website does as it captures the beauty of the earth in still photographs. Ranging from a few minutes to under an hour, these meditations on nature are mesmerizing. Try this one on inner peace.

Meditation Series: Messengers of Life Meditation

NEWS

Maya Lin Focuses on Consequences of Climate Change in New Commission for Madison Square Park Conservancy Opening June 2020

11/12/19  
Ghost Forest  Will Create Grove of Spectral Trees within Park’s Verdant Landscape, Building on Lin’s History of Environmentalism within her Artistic Practice
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A Gift to the Future: Tree Mountain by Agnes Denes

10/11/19  
Agnes Denes reminisces on creating "Tree Mountain-A Living Time Capsule—11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years," a collaborative bioremediation artwork and a human-made virgin forest in Ylöjärvi, Finland. From conception to completion, the creation of “Tree…
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Forest grows in the middle of a football stadium

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill   09/06/19  
Football stadiums have long been synonymous with noise and commotion. But an art installation in Austria is turning this idea on its head in a bid to draw attention to climate change and deforestation.
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Glug is on a mission to create the world’s largest database of climate protest posters

By Ayla Angelos   08/19/19  
Glug, a creative events programme, is on a mission to build the world’s largest database of protest posters. Titled Protest by Design, the project is in preparation for the next round of global climate strikes taking…
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Extinction Rebellion uses bold graphics in protest against climate change

By India Block   04/15/19  
Climate change action group Extinction Rebellion has unveiled a "radically different" visual identity, including DIY protest posters that will allow activists to flypost cities.
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Using art to show the threat of climate change

By Bethany Brookshire   04/05/19  
These seven artists are using climate change concepts in their work
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Climate change is a hot topic at Art Basel, but this year locals are stealing the show

By Alex Harris   12/04/18  
Climate change, the existential threat to the way of life of billions of people around the world, has always been a juicy topic for artists — especially during South Florida’s premiere artistic event, Art Basel.
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12 Artists On: Climate Change

By Zoe Lescaze   08/22/18  
New York City climate-change scenarios project that by 2100 water levels will rise by up to six feet. While this possibility is a long way off, what we do in the present will affect the…
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John Akomfrah: ‘Progress can cause profound suffering’

By Sean O' Hagan   10/01/17  
For the British artist, global warming, the subject of his ambitious new video installation, is a process rooted in technology and exploitation. John Akomfrah grew up in the 1960s, in the shadow of Battersea power…
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Tides of history, from pirates to plastic: A look at the art of Steve McPherson

By Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor   07/30/19  
Like many artists using found plastic, McPherson did not originally seek out plastic as a material to work with. His earlier work was interested in cartography, in books, in collections and archives, in memory and…
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Olafur Eliasson’s Vision of a Sustainable Future

By Ryan Waddoups   07/11/19  
Olafur Eliasson plays with how we perceive and interact with our surroundings-a result of the Icelandic artist’s research into complex geometry, motion patterns, and color theory. Recently, such conversations have been inextricably linked with the…
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Artists harness the power of fire and ice to shape attitudes on climate change

05/15/19  
There's no shortage of powerful images and video when it comes to natural disasters like wildfires and melting glaciers. But a pair of artists are now using those images in new ways, as part of…
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The essential role of art in the fight against climate change

By Marlene Cimons   03/08/19  
"If we want to change the structures and systems out there, we have to change ourselves in here."
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This light installation in Scotland highlights rising sea levels in a way you can’t ignore

By Eben Diskin   03/07/19  
Lines (57° 59′ N, 7° 16’W), a light installation on the Outer Hebrides island of Lochmaddy, Scotland, gives a visual representation of how much the sea level will rise if global warming continues at its current rate.
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Resilience in the Age of Climate Change

By Google Arts & Culture   01/07/19  
Visionary artists and architects explore the specter of a warming planet.
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AI art: A game-changer in fighting climate change?

By Shay Meinecke   10/25/18  
Artificial intelligence is expected to transform our society in numerous ways. Some artists are also using it to better highlight the global impacts of climate change.
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8 Artists Taking On The Big Global Challenge: Climate Change

By Laura Paddison   09/23/18  
We are bombarded with evidence of climate change. We can see impacts through scorching summers, wildfires and increasingly intense extreme weather events. We hear about it through terrifying scientific reports that say we have just…
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Nature has become fragile’ – Olafur Eliasson on melting glaciers and his Experience of a changing climate

By Phaidon Staff   09/04/18  
“I used to think of nature being larger than me,” he tells his friend and collaborator Anna Engberg-Pedersen in our new book, Olafur Eliasson Experience. “ It seemed independent of me, but also caring. But…
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Art & Climate Change

By Noel Kassewitz   08/27/18  
I’ve always believed that art and science strengthen each other when combined. In an era of half-truths, full-lies, and intentionally blurred lines, the relationship between art and science is more important than ever. Science provides…
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12 Artists On: Climate Change

By Zoë Lescaze   08/22/18  
A dozen artistic responses to one of the greatest threats of our time.
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18 Green Artists Who Are Making Climate Change And Conservation A Priority

By Katherine Brooks   12/06/17  
Tying together the scientific and creative worlds in acts of beauty and activism, sculptors, painters, photographers and more have the power to make environmentalism a priority and bring green initiatives to the forefront of cultural…
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A Man on an Eco-Mission in Mixed Media

By Ted Loos   08/29/17  
The artist Justin Brice Guariglia fell into conversation with a stranger. “I got stuck on a gondola ride with a climate change denier,” Mr. Guariglia said recently. The stranger clearly had no idea who he…
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12 ways the arts can encourage climate action

By Anna Leach   08/14/16  
A panel of experts around the world share their thoughts on the most effective ways the arts can prompt climate action.
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Environmental art is on the rise – with a little help from Leonardo DiCaprio

By Amy Shaw   03/26/16  
Olafur Eliasson, Shepard Fairey and Tomás Saraceno are among a growing group of artists creating works that draw attention to the effects of climate change.
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Why Art Has the Power to Change the World

By Olafur Eliasson   01/23/16  
One of the great challenges today is that we often feel untouched by the problems of others and by global issues like climate change, even when we could easily do something to help. We do…
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