Joya: arte + ecología / Lights Going On / AGUAZERO
Joya: arte + ecología is inviting submissions for a competition which has an environmental agenda.
This is the third week Gill Nicol, as an independent arts consultant specialising in contemporary art, has looked at an artist who has engaged with environmental issues through their work. These ‘posts’ are designed to be ‘inspirational prompts’ for those considering applying for the award. She will be posting on her web site, lightsgoingon, and here on our blog as well as on the Joya: arte + ecologíaFacebook Page.
Art and Ecology – Agnes Denes
One of the few women artists working with art and the environment, Agnes Denes’ most spectacular work has been Wheatfield – A Confrontation. In 1982, she planted and harvested two acres of wheat in a landfill site next to Battery Park in New York – a piece of land worth $4.5 billion. Two hundred truckloads of dirt were brought in and 285 furrows were dug by hand and cleared of rocks and garbage. The seeds were also planted by hand and the furrows covered with soil. The field was maintained for four months, weeded, fertilized and sprayed against mildew fungus, and an irrigation system set up. Such an incredible visual image – of wheat blowing gently in the breeze, but set amongst towering skyscrapers and traffic noise.
The harvested grain travelled to twenty-eight cities around the world in an exhibition entitled “The International Art Show for the End of World Hunger”, organised by the Minnesota Museum of Art (1987-90). The seeds were eventually carried away by people who planted them in many parts of the globe. In 2009, as part of the Radical Nature exhibition at the Barbican in London, Wheatfield was restaged at an abandoned railway line in Dalston, East London.
She has said about it:
Wheatfield was a symbol, a universal concept; it represented food, energy, commerce, world trade and economics. It referred to mismanagement, waste world hunger and ecological concerns.
She has gone on to achieve further significant plantings. In 1996, she completed Tree Mountain – A Living Time Capsule in Finland, a massive earthwork and reclamation project. A huge manmade mountain measuring 420 meters long, 270 meters wide, 28 meters high and elliptical in shape was planted with eleven thousand trees by eleven thousand people from all over the world at the Pinzio gravel pits near Ylojarvi, Finland. Sponsored by the United Nations Environment Program and the Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Tree Mountain is protected land to be maintained for four centuries, eventually creating a virgin forest. The trees are planted in an intricate mathematical pattern derived from a combination of the golden section and the pineapple/sunflower patterns.
People who planted the trees received certificates, acknowledging them as custodians of the trees. The certificate is an inheritable document valid for twenty or more generations in the future.
The philosophy behind my work is to create intelligent and beautiful works of art that educate people and earn their place in the public arena by making people feel good about themselves and their surroundings. My work speaks to people from all walks of life creating a strong impact that becomes identified with the site, building or neighbourhood, giving it a special identity.
She has been truly monumental in her thinking; one of the first contemporary artists to examine the relationship of art and science. She has written four books and her work as both an artist and academic has huge relevance for us in the future. She believes that it is through art and science working together and sharing ideas, that new, globally relevant suggestions for change may emerge which can avert the ecological catastrophe that threatens mankind and can guarantee the conditions for global survival.
The third blog written in response to an invitation by Los Gazquez and their opportunity/residency award AGUAZERO/Joya: arte + ecología
