Repair is a radical act
I became an environmental artist after completing my MA in Art & Environment at Falmouth University, just as the Keeling curve was starting to gain public attention, as the next step in my art practice. I have spent most of my life trying to raise awareness and instigate plausible, effective action against the damage which our species is doing to the fragile ecosystem we depend upon, through community engaged creative actions, mostly using recycled textiles and found objects.
My experience as an environmental artist is through working on projects outside the traditional gallery space, as both modern science and contemporary art can be seen as esoteric disciplines beyond the ken of ordinary mortals. The personal meaning of the current parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere or of tanks of pickled sharks is negligible, and having little daily impact. For many, the dire warnings of climate scientists are too huge to comprehend in terms of personal actions, so why bother? Leave it to the next generation to solve, perhaps? Except we may not have a next generation soon.
Our culture is at war with nature, however few people even recognise that they are combatants in the fight. Somewhere, in the transition from leaving the forests and living in cities our species has lost its understanding that we are nature, and instead have made it a category seperate to humanity. This disconnect insulates those of us in the Western hemisphere from the worst excesses of ourselves, leaving us to cry over images of the staving polar bear forced to chew on plastic fishing floats for nutrients and dutifully sorting our recycling bins in the hope that separating the plastic rubbish from the glass will be enough to save us. We go back to doomscrolling and ordering tat from Shein and Temu to fill some nameless void. The disconnect will kill us all.
Our species finds accepting hard facts near impossible. This is where art has the power, and artists hold the key, in a transition from inaction towards behavioural change. The intellectual awareness of the problem is not enough for most people. We watch the footage of the ice shelf collapsing, the wildfires in Canada and Indonesia, we sigh at the sadness of it all, and then we go about our lives as though that distant ocean, that crackling burn, was a hundred planets away.
But artists can engage at a deeper level. Artists can be the bridge between the science of the head and the emotion in the heart, encouraging a transition from thought to action. Artists are how we will bring about a transformation of our society by clearing a pathway through the conflict, helping others change from bystander to participant in the fight to avoid total climactic collapse. Art is the earliest expression of human conciousness, and it is the provider of hope and joy in the face of the overwhelming scale of societal problems; our oldest answer is still the most valuable; make meaningful things, make for the process as much as the result, create and help others create. Find a joy beyond shopping.
My practice revolves around transition of both process and materials, actively demonstrating a journey from trash to treasure, from bystander to participant in the process of art and art-making. I use waste materials as my base resource, repurposing them into things of beauty – but just as important, I teach others to do the same – to go beyond capitalist consumption of more new things and re-engage with the deeper human impulse to make with-the-hands – to knit, draw, sew, cut and glue – transitioning from consumer to maker.
This is both a pleasure in making and an interrogative act, a rebellious choice in the age of overabundance and with everything imaginable available with a simple click to ‘add to basket’ online. I choose to share a joy in slowness, of deliberation and care-taking through visible mending, joyful frugality and community-building.