Is it worth using the arts to better understand our local ecology?
Over this course, we learnt how the environment and art can be related to each other in more ways than one. Environmental art can be used to refer to art describing the natural world, art that celebrates personal engagement with the natural world, and to the practices of ecological artists, whose work directly addresses environmental issues through educating people about the natural world, or intervening in and restoring the natural world.
In the beginning of the course, we had to work on “This body of land” exercise which I found very interesting as it allowed us to share with each other our different backgrounds and the things that have influenced us throughout our lives. Being asked to think about the habitat that we grew up in and how they have changed over time as well as anticipating the change in the future has taught me to appreciate the environment even more and not take anything for granted.
Some students expressed their artwork with creative methods to do with their environment such sea shells from students who lived near the beach and others from urban backgrounds would present collages of cities and buildings. This exercise showed me how diverse the class was and how learning about their background has made an impact on me.
Drawing in the forest was one of the highlights of the course for me. There is something about just being exposed to nature that I feel extremely relaxed and peaceful. Tranquility. I believe it’s the fact we all started from the earth in the beginning and that is what brings us closer to the nature when we are surrounded by it.
The most influential sector of the course was when we working with waste goods and seeing how we could make up something out of nothing. I had carried out some research in this area and came across two French artists named Elise Morin and Clemence Eliard who had created a waste landscape installation in the middle of Paris. This...