This document discusses artists who explore environmental themes and our relationship with the natural world. It provides examples of land art from the 1970s that featured site-specific, experiential works. More recent artists combine different knowledge systems and engage in environmental actions or socially engaged practices involving field work and community collaboration. Students are prompted to reflect on whether human activities can be considered separate from nature, if 'nature' is as constructed as the urban environment, how environmental ethics can be embodied in artworks, and how climate change affects how we make art and an artist's responsibilities.

1. KVB127 Visual Art Open Studio 2
Week 6: Environment

2. Robertson, J., & McDaniel, C. (2017). Themes of contemporary art:
Visual art after 1980 (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Environment
• Use of natural materials (ephemerality vs permanence)
• Land art (site specificity, experiential) - 1970s
• Combination of ‘knowledge systems’
• Environmental actions
• Socially engaged practices – use of field work
• Collaboration and community-building
• Affect – material poetics

3. Andy GOLDSWORTHY
Untitled
Woody Creek, Colorado, n.d.

4. Russell BLACK (Photographer)
Yammunyamun (Gamilaroi carved trees)
near Collymongle NSW, early 1940S (now lost)
Henry KING (Photographer)
Taphoglyph (Wiradjuri carved tree)
near Dubbo, NSW, 191? (now lost)

5. Nancy HOLT
Sun Tunnels, 1976

6. Dominique GW Mazeaud
(French b.1940s?)
The Great Cleansing of the Rio Grande, 1987–1994

7. Alan SONFIST
Time Landscape (1965-1978-Present)
site-specific work, New York City

8. Agnes DENES
(Hungarian-American b. 1931)
Wheatfield - A Confrontation:
Battery Park Landfill, Downtown
Manhattan, 1982

9. N55
(Copenhagen-based Scandinavian
art collective, founded 1994)
City Farming Plant Modules, 2003
https://www.n55.dk/

10. Lucas IHLEIN (Australian b.) + Kim WILLIAMS
The Watershed Land Art Project , 2018-19
Community-based regenerative agriculture project, Mackay

11. Judy WATSON
(Waanyi b.1959)
Heron Island Series #16, #15, 2009
Etching and silkscreen

12. Ken YONETANI (Japanese b.) +
Julia YONETANI
(Australia b)
Sweet Barrier Reef, 2009
sugar, dimensions variable.

13. SUPERFLEX
Great Flood

14. Week 6 Reflection
In considering artists’ responses to the
environment, reflect on the relationship
between the human and the natural that occurs
in the work.
•Can human activities be regarded as separate
from the natural world?
•Is ‘nature’ just as constructed as the urban
environment?
•How can environmental ethics be embodied by
an artwork?
•How does climate change affect the way we
make art? Does the artist have more or less
responsibility than others?
Make notes in your blog.
Mark DION and
the Chicago Urban Ecology Action Group
1992-3