Artists raise awareness for the conservation about the planet and its future
April 22nd, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day amid the threat of climate change, and artists across the globe have been using their work to communicate the message to preserve the most basic elements that sustain the planet.
“I had that kind of connection with the basic primitive, fundamental basis for all of our existence of the Earth,” says Amanda Wallwork, an artist and curator whose work focuses on geology and landscape.
Wallwork believes “rocks dictate everything” and its deterioration means the loss of our past and where everything starts. Through her paintings and drawings, she illustrates the natural changes that the soil or a particular landscape has experienced over time.
“Sometimes we completely exploit that and destroy it, and, in some cases, individuals work with it, enhancing it and preserving it for future generations,” she says.
Other artists, such as Carol Sharp, have also shifted from an anthropocentric view of art to a natural approach. “We need to realise that we would be nothing without plants and couldn’t survive without them,” she says.
Sharp’s pictures have an activism component to make people see plants as intelligent living beings, rethink their relationship with nature, and understand the necessity of protecting the Earth.
As Carol Sharp says: “We were thinking in a linear way, and about life as a lot of separate objects when in reality, it's about the relationship between things and interconnectedness.”
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