The climate crisis hasn’t gone unnoticed by the creative communities, with many artists around the world responding to it in their practice, and the Royal Academy in London staging an ‘Eco-Visionaries’ exhibition in 2019 featuring artists confronting a planet in a state of emergency: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/architecture-environment-eco- visionaries
The international response to the climate crisis accelerated before the Coronavirus pandemic, with organisations such as the United Nations and International Monetary fund, and movements such as Friends of the Earth, Extinction Rebellion and the School Strike for Climate created by Nobel-Prize nominee Greta Thunberg, mobilising to raise the profile of the climate crisis and lobby governments to reduce CO2 emissions in their countries.
Even the Coronavirus pandemic that blindsided the world at the start of the year is not unrelated to the interference of man in the natural world; for Covid-19 is a virus that is said to have originated in bats. An ironic butterfly effect meant that at the height of lockdown when flights were grounded and cities became ghost towns with people were confined to their homes, the planet was given a chance to breathe and worldwide carbon emissions were drastically reduced. The flip side of reduced carbon emissions during lockdown has been an increase in the use of single use plastics, with discarded medical masks littering streets and dirtying rivers around the world.
As we feel our way through the global Covid-19 pandemic, scientists measure the effect of lockdown on the planet. Global lockdown led to a sharp fall in CO2 emissions, and the scale of social disruption caused by the novel Coronavirus is unprecedented in our lifetime.
One stark indicator of the pandemic’s far-reaching impact, which grounded flights and travel, and saw empty streets and towns all over the world, was the reduction in fossil fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.
In China, carbon emissions were down an estimated 18% between early February and mid- March due to falls in coal consumption and industrial output, according to calculations first published by climate science and policy website CarbonBrief. Meanwhile, in the European Union, declining power demands and depressed manufacturing during lockdown led to a fall in emissions of nearly 400 million metric tons, a figure that represents about 9 per cent of the EU’s cumulative 2020 emissions target. That slowdown caused the world’s largest emitter to avoid some 250 million metric tons of carbon pollution, more than half the annual carbon emissions of the United Kingdom. However, this positive impact won’t last if governments around the world don’t make a concerted effort to move towards cleaner energy sources.
The art world has a part to play too, and in 2020 we have seen significant events such as Frieze Art Fair, Art Basel, and the Venice Biennale cancelled or moved online. Pre-lockdown, there were debates about the negative impact of the contemporary art world on the environment, resulting from the annual art merry-go-round of art fairs, auctions and Biennales. This involved significant carbon emissions from shipping artworks around the world, labour intensive installations and the private jets, helicopters, super-yachts and flights of Uber-rich art collectors.
So, despite the devastating effects of Covid-19 in terms of global death and infection rates, the only silver lining is that the world was forced to stop for a minute and be still. We need to contemplate the effect our actions have on the planet, and hopefully move forward to a new way of living with a smaller carbon footprint and more consideration for the Earth.
Artists throughout history have created work that responds to the world around them, such as the Soviet-era propaganda graphics that shaped the Russian Revolution, or the Dada art movement formed during WW1 as a response to the horrors of war. And in more recent memory, as we live through an era of rising global temperatures and increasing natural disasters and resulting mass migration, members of the artistic community have been producing work addressing climate change, warning of the damage we are doing to our planet or attempting to capture the beauty of nature.
The artists featured in ReWild aim to raise awareness of climate change and harness the beauty of nature in their artistic practice. For if we don’t ReWild our planet, Attenborough says ominously that: “Scientists predict by 2030 the rainforest turns into a dry savanna, altering the global water cycle. The Arctic becomes ice-free, global warming increases, frozen soils release methane and accelerate climate change dramatically”.
With thanks to exhibition coordinator Alice Crayson and art consultant Lucy Edwards.
https://www.runway-gallery.com
