London: artists’ exhibition on climate change

Bush and global warming, cartoon

Arctic whisperers

(Tuesday 27 June 2006)

EXHIBITION: The Ship – The Art of Climate Change

Jerwood Gallery at the Natural History Museum, London SW7

MICHAL BONCZA ventures into uncharted territory when he experiences the varied responses of a handful of intrepid artists to climate change.

In the unlikely setting of the Natural History Museum, down the corridor from the giant Brachiosaurus skeleton in the main hall, something is stirring which will perplex the young and old in equal measure.

It is the presence of works of modern art with a difference.

In a bold experiment, a dozen or so artists have been asked to look at climate change.

Centuries ago, European artists of the day were persuaded to provide an interpretation of God’s omnipresent power that could be easily absorbed by ordinary humans and help alter, if only out of fear, their behaviour.

Art-led social engineering, if you will and, at the time, not entirely without merit.

Today, in a darkened hall of the impressive Jerwood Gallery, spotlights pick up works of art that endeavour to present, on a human scale, another power that we’ll be well advised to fear.

The colossal and destructive power of climate change.