Greenpeace Advert: A Song of Oil, Ice and Fire

This Advert incorporates art in the form of paintings as well as being a video piece. It also relates to my work in that it is highlighting environmental issues. This is an incredibly powerful piece highlighting what our world could be like if oil companies drill in arctic waters by utilising american landscape paintings and re-envisioning them harmed with oil spills and rig explosions.

To visualise the threat that oil disasters have on our planet, British artists Kennardphillips created the new versions of the paintings by searching through thousands of real life imagery of oil damage and creating montages of new landscapes highlighting the environmental harm. This both links to my painting and collage work.

This work is inspiring in that a major green organisation have used artwork to convey an environmental message and have deemed the landscape painting as an object that people can relate to and when depicted world damage will make an impact. This is highly significant in relation to my work as I am working with using the traditional landscape painting as a relatable object also and using it to portray environmental issues and thinking about how people have nostalgia for aesthetic views of the land when really it is experiencing harm.

Ha Schult – “Trash People”

I came across the artist Ha Schult whilst searching for artists that incorporated Litter and pollutants into their work as I am doing within my painted works. Ha Schult creates sculptural works that he called “trash people”, human forms made out of litter.

Sculptures of “Trash People “, a perfomance made of German artist Ha Schult are exhibited at the Maniacea Castle for a G8 Environment meeting on April 22, 2009 in Siracusa, on the Italian island of Sicily. AFP PHOTO / VINCENZO PINTO (Photo credit should read VINCENZO PINTO/AFP/Getty Images)

“In twenty containers they roam around the world like refugees of the consumer society. The Trash People are images of ourselves. We produce trash and we will become trash. Today’s Coca-Cola bottle is the Roman archeological found of tomorrow” – Ha Schult

He refers to his trash people as refugees of consumer society. To me, these sculptures comment on the amount of litter that we create, but also comments on the fact that the world is becoming less natural. The human body is a natural form and to see it made out of litter and man made waste to me is very powerful and makes you think about how much waste you are producing. It also portrays the fact that man are responsible for harming the planet, through littering and causing landfill.

I have never really experimented with sculpture, but this work inspires me to want to use the litter I am collecting to start experimenting with sculptural works. Whether I make piles of litter, like mini representations of landfill or make a recognisable form, I think having something made out of lots of litter that people can relate to highlights the harm our world is experiencing.