That accusation has prompted much thought in Cornelia Parker. Deeply  concerned by environmental issues (she is another graduate of Cape Farewell) she says she tries to respond to climate change ‘as an artist, a citizen, a parent’ . She offsets the flights she cannot avoid taking, she lobbies her child’s school and the Tate on carbon footprints. And she recognises how art may have a particular duty here to engage, challenge, perhaps even warn. It was while listening to scientists recount their struggle to communicate the scale of climate change to politicians that she realised that art had a vital role to communicate what is essentially beyond our imagination. She describes this as 'a call to arms', but she admits some uncertainty. She doesn’t want her work to  be labelled with an issue. She says she has done only one piece of work – a filmed interview with Noam Chomsky [Chomskian Abstract, 2007] which appears in RETHINK – which specifically deals with climate change, and even then the interview covers a broad range of issues. 

A good example of this approach was Radical Nature’s recreation of Agnes Denes’ Wheatfield, A Confrontation [1982] in Dalston, north-east London. The original was planted in Manhattan, and its image of wheat in the shadow of skyscrapers is widely regarded as iconic of the then emerging environment movement. She achieved what curators often fondly talk of – that single immediately powerful image which could immediately speak to multiple audiences. Twenty seven years on in 2009, it was recreated on wasteland in the middle of Dalston. French architect Nicholas Henninger built a windmill alongside to mill flour and bake bread to illustrate the full cycle of seed to bread. He admitted he didn’t know how to make bread but he hoped someone would turn up who did. The idea was improvisational, spontaneous; it had ambitions to draw in the community of this densely populated part of inner London and prompt them to think about energy, food production and the environment. 

It was a bold and inspirational but over the course of the few weeks it ran in the summer of 2009, its limitations were also very evident. Despite its position at the intersection of several busy roads, it seemd to attract only a small subsection of the population – the kind of audience who would probably go to a gallery anyway. It did  not seem to have built up the relationships in the community to act as the kind of catalyst for change; the lack of community participation in its construction (no one knew what was going on, local schools didn’t seem to know anything) or even knowledge – there were no signs, no explanations to draw in those waiting at the bus queues only a few hundred feet away. The wheat seedlings were lifted in Norfolk, driven in on lorries, illustrating the idea’s deracination and lack of local connection. It ended up being a show, a curious spectacle, rather than a transformational experience. The site has reverted to wasteland.

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Exhibitions and organisations mentioned in this article

Radical Nature: Art and Architecture for a changing planet 1969-2009
RETHINK: Contemporary Art and Climate Change
Earth: Art of a Changing World

Cape Farewell