On December 3rd London welcomed a magnificent and very timely new public art installation to the city. The new work, CO2 morrow sits atop the façade of the Royal Academy’s 6 Burlington Gardens. The piece was commissioned by the Royal Academy of Arts and the National Trust and was created by artists Marcos Lutyens and Alessandro Marianantoni especially for the exhibition Earth: Art of a Changing World, which will run at The Royal Academy GSK Contemporary through January 31st.
The sculpture itself is 26 feet in diameter and is built in the shape of a zeolite, otherwise known as a “scrubber molecule” a molecule that helps to leach carbon dioxide out of the air. It is constructed of recyclable carbon fiber and will be lit by 1,440 LED lights. The illumination of the tiny lights will correspond directly to the fluctuating levels of CO2 in the air, information that will be transmitted from greenhouse gas monitoring technologies at the School of Environmental Sciences in East Anglia.
The spectacular piece represents the first artistic collaboration between these two formidable cultural institutions and represents a combined realization of the efforts of the National Trust in raising awareness about issues facing the natural environment, and the Royal Academy’s goals of consistently introducing progressive creative works to the larger community.
The piece is compellingly conceived and beautifully executed and the effect of the light is interesting too. While the blinking, changing colored lights have a sort of Christmas-light effect—very much in keeping with the season—the function of the light’s movement subtly reminds the viewer of the somewhat unsettling reality that climate change is an absolute certainty in the years ahead.
In selecting this piece as the public face of their exhibition, GSK Contemporary is in no way shying away from confronting the realities of climate change—only relatively recently accepted as an actual inevitability by many world leaders. Far from being all doom and gloom the exhibit posits the more practical and actionable question of how we will transition as people and as societies to this new world. Art like CO2 morrow while beautiful and compelling, also does some of the difficult work of breaking down the somewhat abstract concept of climate change (which has heretofore been explained in the media only with broad strokes) and demystifying it for the public, making it comprehensible as a situation that will have far-reaching effects on a personal level. This allows the individual experiencing the art to examine what the effects of climate change could look like in his or her own life, and may help to encourage the development of more environmentally responsible lifestyle habits.
However the political is certainly secondary here—first and foremost in consideration is the aesthetic and provocative quality of the art on display. Some of the artists whose work is featured in the exhibition are passionately and vehemently dedicated to discussing environmental concerns in their art , while others have found the themes of global warming and climate change to be only peripherally relevant to their work. The goal here is less to politically charge the art, than to see the arresting visual qualities of the work on display through the lens of an environmental crisis that has global implications. The National Trust’s website states that “The exhibition does not aim to preach nor admonish, whilst at its heart sits the overwhelming quality of the individual works and the overall aesthetic, visual and experiential impact that the exhibition strives to achieve.”
CO2 morrow will travel to various National Trust properties in 2010.
cool story.. public art for the good of the public or planet, as the case may be
[...] featured a discussion of Rotterdam’s Waterpleinen, and The Royal Academy GSK Contemporary’s C02morrow; two pieces of public art/design that directly address our living environment. It is rarer [...]