Representing nature: art and climate change

Abstract

Climate change is now an established scientific fact, and dealing with it may require significant shifts in consumption and economic organization. A key question is how these changes can be achieved, by regulation or shifts of consciousness on the parts of individuals. Among the means by which a shift of awareness might occur is cultural work — including the production and reception of art and literature. But does art which represents climate change distance or normalize the problem, or can new kinds of art construct new ways in which to see or intervene in the conditions and systems which produce global warming? The article considers recent exhibitions of art dealing with environmental and climate change issues in the UK and USA. Before that, the article summarizes aspects of recent relevant work on art by geographers. Looking at cases of environmentalist art, the article initially differentiates art representing climate change in dramatic images from an emerging tendency to practical intervention. It argues that art may contribute to a shift in attitudes, but wonders whether intervention-as-art is in its way another form of representation, and whether art inevitably distances whatever problems it addresses. This is an insoluble difficulty: the real is always mediated and distanced in culture, yet art may still draw attention to conditions and to the inherent contradictions they contain.