Art Space Ecology: Two Views--Twenty Interviews embraces the international context of today’s art making and, through the medium of interviews, encourages readers to engage directly with nature-focused creators and their artistic processes. The twenty artists, though diverse in backgrounds and methods, all produce works that are either embedded in the environment or that document our ever-changing landscapes. In these interviews, Grande explores the motivations that inspire artists to use the natural world as their canvas and how their works explore the intersections of art, space, and the environment, raising questions about our relationship with the landscapes themselves. An engaging introduction by Edward Lucie-Smith, English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster, sets the stage for these artists to share about the artistic processes of their works.
What People Are Saying
"No significant movement in art remains independent of social and historical forces. Nor can it remain independent of surrounding related artistic impulses, which may not be pursuing the same ends. These are things that emerge clearly from John K. Grande’s fascinating series of interviews with artists working in this field. Ecological art and Land Art have a much longer history than most experts on contemporary culture are willing to suppose.... Other parallels can be found in the historical record of non-European cultures, especially in China and Japan, where landscape occupies the central position in art that Europe, since the Greeks, has accorded to the human figure." Art & Museum
"Whatever the medium under consideration, whether sculpture, organic interventions, performance art, body art, or technically complex installations, the discussions he choreographs in his new books explore and reveal the often mysterious motivations behind the maker’s making and unearths their intentions in a gentle yet dramatic manner. This book demonstrates clearly that in the end, or even more so, in the beginning, the natural world is our original and implicit canvas.
By examining the powerful intersections between art, technology and biology itself, he manages to reveal the deep questions that drive each artist forward. Perhaps the biggest question, and the most commonly recurring one: what is the most appropriate relationship we have or should have to the landscape? Not as something we live on, but as a place we should live with." CRITICSATLARGE.CA
"This book is a field guide for artists working with nature, or addressing issues of the natural world in performance, video, painting, sculpture, installation or body art. The natural world becomes a canvas for exploring the intersections of art, space, and the environment. Questions about our relationship with land are raised by the dynamic interactivity and dialogues between John K. Grande and the artists: object and environment, artist and audience, society and nature." Arte.Es Magazine, Spain
Table of Contents
- Foreword by Edward Lucie-Smith
- Introduction by John K. Grande
- Paul Walde - Requiem for a Glacier
- Jason deCaires Taylor - Rising Waters
- Jan-Erik Andersson - Form Follows Fun
- Milos Sejn - Walking Past Babylon
- Buster Simpson - It’s About Habitat
- Peter Hutchinson - With Nature in Mind
- Joshua Portway & Lise Autogena - Environments in Conflict
- Chris Booth - Sculpture in Ecolution
- The Harrisons - How Big is Here?
- Pilar Ovalle - Nature In Place
- Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas – Best to Love Bugs
- David Maisel - Tapping Topography
- Alan Sonfist - Culture Nature
- David Mach - DISRUPTOR
- Haesim Kim - Contemplating Nature
- NILS-UDO - Towards Nature
- Gyenis Tibor - Photo Actionism
- Dennis Oppenheim - Putting the Public Back into Public Art
- Robert Polidori - Ars Memoria
- Henrique Oliveira - Being and Form