19th July - 18th October 2009

Radical Nature looks at Environmental art and architecture to explore how both past work and that of contemporary practitioners has approached the subject as its urgency has increased.

There is no set path or order to view the work which I much prefer to a typical linear layout, and the first piece I viewed was by A12 called Green Room. You step up a simple wooden structure to see that the whole of the floor is covered in plants, and the walls are entirely mirrored. Whilst the illusion of infinite greenery des work, I couldn’t help feeling I was stood within a particularly cramped changing room. It is overshadowed by Henrik Hakansson’s piece Fallen Forest – in which a 16-meter-squared area of rainforest is constructed at a right angle to the floor. Growing out of the wall the trees appear to be surrendering at the viewers feet and remind us of our complicated relationship with nature. The disturbing angle at which they protrude from the wall and seem to bow down in submission remind us of our intense responsibility, whilst the lush green tones remind us that nature is a resilient force certain to outlive our own species unless we acknowledge its importance. Beside this work stands Anya Gallaccio’s butchered beech, that has been sawn into pieces and then reconstructed with wire cables and crude nuts and bolts. The visual contrasts between the textures and subtle shapes of the branches and the stark, piercing lines of the machined additions are fantastic, and seem to form an uncomfortable vision of the possible dangers of misguided reparations with nature. Wolf Hilbertz provides a positive example of technology providing part of a solution to one outcome of global warming. Through using passing a small current through seawater, minerals build up into solid forms around a structure, providing an artificial coral reef that is soon adopted by the sea life and develops and supports a life system of its own. Its proximity to Smithson’s groundbreaking Spiral Jetty leaves the early piece of land art looking selfish and self-centred, although the accompanying video is mesmerising (if slightly nauseating) as the 70s helicopter makes passes over the artist as he traces his work. There are a few interesting examples of work enlisted under the title of art or architecture that actively seeks to improve the environment or raise awareness instead of simply commenting on it. Agnes Denes act of planting a two-acre field of wheat on Manhattan island highlight misplaced priorities, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s work Waste Flow Video documented her shaking hands with all 8,500 garbage guys in the New York district. Whilst it is only the documentation that stands, the work retains a freshness of activism that most of the other work lacks – and retrospectively enforces the sense of urgency these issues demand. Of the show the more memorable piece for me was essentially the simplest. Tue Greenfort constructs crude, elemental camera traps from MDF and disposable cameras, and left over night in carious green spaces. As an unsuspecting fox tries to make off with a piece of frankfurter, the flash is triggered, and the wide-eyed scavenger normally so elusive is captured in harsh detail. Joseph Beuy’s contribution to an exhibition of this subject is a given, but sadly I found Honeypump at the Workplace too intensely personal to engage me fully.

Efforts to be minimise the shows environmental impact such as printing on the back of old posters and reusing material for furniture is severely contradicted by greater efforts to make money – some entirely useless plastic ants are considered the perfect accompany to a picnic, some strange ‘fashion gloves’ imported from Japan and a huge, ‘designer’ chicken pen made from moulded plastic seemed to undermine their initially commendable intentions.