Tag: Anthropocene
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Macroalgae Matters
Seaweed in a time of climate crisis: an encounter with a rotten seashore funk prompts writer Andrew Furman to discover more about sargassum.
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Endlings: Drawing Extinction
There are many different approaches to drawing animals. In particular there was a shift in the 19th century away from French idealism towards an approach, led by British artists such as Edward Lear, that prioritised drawing direct from nature. The work of Amy Dover, a fine artist and illustrator based in Newcastle, England, draws upon…
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Un(in)tended Garden
Notes on that which grows without us Urbs en Horto – City in a Garden – that is my town’s motto. To its architects, this was a matter of greenspace and planned esplanades sprinkled throughout the sprawl of a relentless grid. To me, it is more a statement of symmetry, if not synonymity, in the…
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Extinction and the Image
Animals. The non-human kind. They are everywhere in an increasingly virtual world and more often not there in reality. Our eyes and minds seem instinctively to search out and recognise animal forms. Whether we experience a physical encounter or one mediated through the image, animals are insistent to us in their familiarity. So too in…
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Open Call: Wolf Crossing
In Finland there is a line around the city: susiraja, the wolf border. Within is law and order: shopping malls and social security. Beyond the susiraja lie the wilds and the wolves – just 200 at the last count. Who will howl in the forests when the last wolf departs? The susiraja may be inviolable…
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The Chernobyl Herbarium
Chernobyl and Plant Life: Silent Witnessing It is incredibly difficult to talk and write about Chernobyl. No serious book on the subject has been able to dodge the task of thinking about the conditions of possibility for thinking in proximity to this theme or this scene. Still before commencing, a work on Chernobyl must first…
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Lost in Fathoms
Stumbling dim across the surface of the earth: humanity. Our legacy not culture or religion or science, but ruin. Our lasting traces that of footprints, not brain waves. Is this what makes us unique? A geological force in our own right? Certainly this is the view announced in 2012 at the 34th International Geological Congress…
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Anais Tondeur – I.55
Or, the girl who swallowed the remnants of a forest. “A century ago, a young girl swallowed a pencil.” So begins I.55, a beguiling new book by contemporary artist Anaïs Tondeur, which had its official launch at GV Art in December. Tondeur is not an artist who does things by halves, and the book’s launch…