Whether you believe an artist has the power to bring about social change—for example, to raise awareness of people’s interdependence with the environment—may depend on your views about the nature of art itself.
For example, if you take an aesthetic view—that art is form, and should be considered independent of the intention and circumstances of the artist—you are unlikely to view an artwork as potentially socially powerful.
Art in Context
But there are schools of art criticism that stress context, including how the art object is treated, exhibited and appreciated. In his book The Art Question (London: Routledge, 2003), Nigel Warburton asserts that decontextualizing art is an obstacle to understanding, and that “art appreciation must get past the simplistic notion that seeing is innocent….Seeing, as philosophers of science are quick to point out, is a theory-laden activity.”
Warburton links this view with George Dickie’s “institutional” theory of art and Stephen Davies’ “procedural” theory. It opens the possibility that as an art object is actually different depending on its setting and audience, it could in fact have a significant impact on a viewer, at least one minimally aware of a social or environmental issue.
This contextual or relational approach to art criticism raises many interesting questions, such as: “when is photo-journalism art?”
Ecosystem Issues: Australian and New Zealand Artists
Certainly the work of many modern artists suggests that they believe they can make a difference. The Suite 101 article Environment, Society and Art describes an exhibition developed by the Natural World Museum in partnership with the United Nations Environment Programme, in which artists from around the world seek to raise awareness of and propose solutions to climate change.
An Australian artist with powerful environmental and social themes is Fiona Hall. Her exhibition Force Field was developed by City Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia. The show will be in Wellington and later in Christchurch, New Zealand (at the Christchurch Art Gallery--Te Puna o Waiwhetu) through to mid-February 2009. Hall has been invited to exhibit at the Louvre in 2011.
An example of Hall’s work is Tender (2003-2005), in which shredded American dollar bills are woven into birds’ nests. Mourning Chorus (2007-2008) is a sculpture montage: the skulls of extinct and endangered native birds, in a coffin-like glass cage, have been replaced with garbage in the form of plastic containers.
New Zealand Pacific artist Michel Tuffery is known for his 1994 piece Pisupo Lua Afe [Corned Beef, 2000], which commemorates the introduction of cattle into the Pacific by European explorer James Cook. Built from flattened corn beef tins, the work is a life-size sculpture of a bull. Tuffery is currently working on a series with a Japanese water theme, exploring climate change and other environmental issues.
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