NEWS
Helen
Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison will exhibition a large-scale
multimedia video installation, Greenhouse Britain, and other early
works that relate to global warming.
GLOBAL WARNING
The Rising of Waters
The Warming of Lands
The Upward Movement of People
January 10 – February 7, 2009
at Ronald Feldman Gallery, NYC
There is a gentle beauty in their work, and much charisma in the otherworldly maps and text panels that are poetic and personal rather than dryly official. The exhibition is, of course, a call to action, but it is foremost a lyrical meditation on what ecological disaster and collective recovery might one day look like. -Elizabeth Mahoney, The Guardian, 2008
Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison will exhibition a large-scale multimedia video installation, Greenhouse Britain, and other early works that relate to global warming. Environmental artists who have collaborated since 1971, the Harrisons are internationally recognized for producing visionary works and their epic projects have influenced long-term policy planning. Greenhouse Britain, a commissioned and collaborative project, and was exhibited in multiple venues in 2007 – 2008.
A commissioned and collaborative project, Greenhouse Britain sets forth a vast amount of information that is taken for granted -- the future rising of the waters and the warming of the lands -- and offers radical new living forms for the upward displacement of large populations. Part One features a large topographical floor model of the British Isles on which projected images dramatically show the rising waters and redrawn coastline. A haunting soundtrack of three voices fills the space, posing Socratic questions and offering solutions.
Wall works include large murals consisting of maps, with visual metaphors that define and unify geographical areas, and text. Part Two (in collaboration with the Land Planning Group at Sheffield University) proposes a Pennine settlement organized around water tributaries and small-scale sustainable farming. Part Three presents a film showing the city of Bristol underwater and its subsequent salvation. Part Four (in collaboration with APG architects) reverses the development in the Lea Valley, replacing identical new housing with solar-heated apartments on stilts with hanging gardens, with a proposal to reforest farm and meadow lands that will insure the air quality, regional biodiversity, and enhance the water supplies of London.
Part Five is a model (made in collaboration with ATOPIA) of The Vertical Promenade, a centerpiece for a 10-12,000 person vertical village structure which, as a metaphor, is the difference between development and settlement, taking properties of an urban main street and shifting them into a vertical experience. Its inhabitants can meander, replacing the alienation that exists in normal high-rise buildings by becoming the stage for community activities.
Early global warming works relate to Tibet, Pennisula Europe, the Lagoon Cycle from 1974, and an update on the Sacramental River thirty years later.
Greenhouse Britain (greenhousebritain.greenmuseum.org/) has been produced as an artist-led project by Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison and principles of the Harrison Studio and Associates (Britain) in collaboration with Tyndall Climate Center, Great Britain, designed by Westergaard & Harrison, and funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison are Professors Emeritus from the University of California San Diego www.theharrisonstudio.net.
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Reception: January 10, 6-8pm. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am-6pm. Monday by appointment. For information about the exhibition, contact Sarah Paulson at (212) 226-3232 or sarah@feldmangallery.com.
Please visit the Greenhouse Britain website and the web exhibition here:
http://greenhousebritain.greenmuseum.org/
