The Myth of Environmental Sustainability: Problems for Contemporary Artists

Abstract

In response to the climate crisis, it can be compelling for artists to place environmental concerns at the centre of their practice. This premise leads to the core question of this project: Can environmental art be an effective form of activism? Like all political art, environmental art is beset by problems that are both logical and ethical. Such issues arise because, despite the Duchampian idea that anything can be art, activism and art engage with political problems in different ways. Art relies on ambiguity and affect while activism demands clarity and action. The conflation of the two can turn art into propaganda or reduce activism to aesthetic gesture. Moreover, art embodies the material conditions of its time, so it inevitably reflects the structural limitations that constrain activism. The commodification of nature and sustainability itself is but one of the issues that both art and activism must contend with. In short, art cannot transcend the structures in which it exists and that it seeks to address. It can only expose them through its processes. This project explores such processes and their outcomes, not to critique environmental art but to examine the nuances that challenge its practice.

The studio component consists of three bodies of work made from salvaged materials, based on the premise that waste lies at the heart of the climate crisis. The series It’s a Circus Out There, consists of sculptures constructed from packaging cardboard, cut, painted and assembled into architectural forms. The recovery of resources challenges the structural economic principle of private property. The series, Click Here to Reset Your Password, consists of cardboard packaging arranged in layers within a frame to epitomise how framing shapes public perception. The series, Il Pretesto, consists of assemblages of salvaged waste entombed in paper pulp, leaving some parts exposed. The works highlight how dominant ideologies govern what is concealed and what is visible.