environmental shows are just a trend!

In the exhibition Life Forms at Bonniers Konsthall and even more so in the essay written by Sara Arrhenius the curator of the exhibition, an argument is made for a tectonic shift seen in cultural practices dealing with issues of ecology and nature. The catalogue makes a sound appeal for a move from the idealism and metanarratives of the late 60’s and early 70’s to a sort of particularity of the new century.

The dominant tropes of that earlier time would include the Gaia hypothesis, a maternal earth, and absolute interconnectedness. All of these bear a quality of universality, and feed into the often-idealistic and occasionally grandiose drift of much land art. The sheer scale of works by artists such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer or Walter de Maria, seem blustering and bombastic in retrospect. There is a machismo to the work. Boys with toys, albeit very big toys, tearing vast chunks out of the side of a mountain or building the monumental. The eighties beckoned a second wave swapping these testosterone developments for a softer, gentler and often English romanticism. Looking at the works of Richard Long, David Nash, Andy Goldsworthy or Chris Drury it seems impossible to escape the quote “if you cut an English artist he bleeds a landscape”. An introspective, quiet practice of lonely walks through the dark woods and deserted beaches. The works are suffused with small rituals of sunrise and sunset, solstices, collecting and above all else walking. With the addition of political purpose the works of Hans Haake, Joseph Beuyss and herman de vries mark the social commitment of the time. Even here, the institutional canon is conspicuously male. And despite the works of Nancy Holt, Alice Aycock, Linda Taylor and Mary Miss landscape domination and romantic introspection remain the province of a privileged male view. Here is an extraordinary quotation form Robert Smithson form 1966 apparently speaking about his own work.

“Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments seem to cause us to forget the future.”

I was looking through a catalogue from an exhibition in Scotland from 1987 titled “The Unpainted Landscape” with beautifully crafted essays by Simon Cutts and David reason amongst others. The tone of that exhibition unlike Life Forms is hopeful. There is a deep wish to recover our place in the ‘natural’ order of things, and echoing Habermas, an attempt to re-enchant the world. This seems a lifetime away from the dark foreboding of our current ‘world’ view. Smithson’s forgetfulness, the personal journey’s of Long, or the hermitage of Ian Hamilton Finlay, appear almost vulgar, a sort of wilful negligence. We are facing environmental disaster and taking a hike, redesigning a mountain or personal retreat are hardly justified responses.

Life Forms to my mind, paints a bleak picture, a fragile and insecure existence. As we plan for our major climate change exhibition next year Re-Think the move that Sara Arrhenius and Life Forms points to is critical. We are not hosting an exhibition like this because it is part of some current trend. I have been told that environmental shows were really de rigueur a couple of years ago. This thought is as sickening as it is intellectually stagnant. The capacity of artists, to reflect and propose in the shadow of an impending catastrophe has never been more urgent.

http://www.bonnierskonsthall.se/en/Exhibitions/Exhibitions/Livsformer/