I went to Manchester to visit Futuresonic yesterday and joined in Amy Balkin’s artwork Reading the IPCC’s Fourt Assessment on Climate Change outside the Centre for the Urban Built Environment.
Afterwards I spoke to Amy Balkin about her work there:
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Amy Balkin | Futuresonic 2009 from RSA Arts & Ecology on Vimeo.
With two more days to go you may still find free slots if you check out Amy Balkin’s website.
The parliament of reality, a new artwork by Olafur Eliasson consisting of a man-made island, will be opened on May 16. For more information see the RSA Arts & Ecology website.
Designing artwork from junked objects is nothing new for eco-minded artist Katherine Harvey, and she has thrilled one and all with the stunning pieces of art that promote recycling and environmental conservation.Â
via Eco Arts: Plastic Bottle Chandelier – Recycling On A Grand Scale – Ecofriend.
I’m really pleased to say that the RSA Arts & Ecology site is hosting a new artwork. It’s a collaborative piece of poetry created by Melanie Challenger and John Kinsella called Dialogue between the body and the soul.
The idea came from a reading that both poets were invited to in New York in 2007. Though they had worked together — John had edited Melanie’s debut collection — they’d never actually met, so the event would have given them both that chance. Kinsella lives in Australia; Challenger lives in the UK. But both were becoming increasingly uneasy about the idea of artists travelling internationally just to give readings of their own work.
In the end, neither travelled to New York. Instead, they’ve decided to create this collaborative work which comes from their decisions to eschew air travel for such events.
The first poem arrived in my email box yesterday; it’s posted on the site today, initiating the exchange. Take a look. I’m loving the idea of seeing a piece of work like this evolve in my email inbox.
You can link to the poems here tinurl.com/dialoguepoems.
Photo: Roger Bishop
Tania Kovats’ TREE will be unveiled at the Natural History Museum tomorrow. It’s a special commission for Darwin 200. In an interview with Tom Bailey for RSA Arts & Ecology, she talks about the process of thought that led her to take a thin section from a 200-year-old oak tree. There’s one great section in which she mentions the extraordinary page from Darwin’s notebook, in which he’s written “I thinkâ€, then drawn his first representation of the evolutionary “tree of lifeâ€, and then about what it makes her aspire to as an artist:
What, if any, other artistic interpretations of evolutionary theory, or natural history, have influenced your work?
The I think drawing is definitely a drawing that I’ve been compelled by for quite a long time, partly because of how amazingly well it describes a moment of conception. It’s like the idea is happening in front of you when you look at that drawing. In drawing there’s an exchange between thought and the mark that you make, the drawing becomes a trace of that moment. So I think that drawing is so exciting, partly because it’s also very simple. The thing that compels me about Darwin’s evolutionary theory is that you have a really simple answer to a very big, complex question. A lot of the artworks that I feel are strongest (and I strive to do this in my own work) are incredibly simple in essence, but may have many complex readings that can be projected onto them. A dumb art work is one that you can usually talk about the longest. An artwork that has something very simple at its core then lends itself to constant reflection, and lots of layering can go on.