All the hardened climate sceptics coming to the Hayward Gallery are about to have their minds powerfully and irrevocably changed. Because written in big, flashing neon across one of the gallery’s main walls it says ‘Climate Change is Real’. Bang. There you go, mind changed. Thanks art.
It’s bollocks, obviously. That neon by Andrea Bowers, like so much ecologically-focused art that has dominated London’s galleries and institutions recently, confuses posturing and lecturing for actually making a difference. How many climate change deniers are actually going to come to a show called ‘Dear Earth’, and of those, how many will see ‘Climate Changes is Real’ and think ‘oh yeah, whoops’.
But here we are, trapped in a world where galleries feel like they need to ‘do something’ about the state of the planet, so they show the kind of artworks that would make for hateful totebags.
It’s not all as bad as that neon, thankfully. The best works here draw attention to hidden, ignored ecological issues or push you to rethink how you approach the world around you.
Imani Jacqueline Brown’s installation maps the hidden, lost canals and wells of America’s deeply polluted South, a place that was colonised, overfarmed and is now riven with grim petrochemical plants. It’s a land built on conquering, death, slavery and corporate greed. That’s a story worth telling.
It confuses posturing and lecturing for actually making a difference
As is Richard Mosse’s, which uses scientific and military imaging cameras to explore the impact of oil extraction on indigenous communities in the Amazon basin. His photos and videos are stark, confrontational and hugely uncomfortable. The film shows indigenous women protesting as the lands around them are eroded and eviscerated. This isn’t his best work, but it still does a good job of showing the real world impact of human greed.
Other works here try to shift your mindset. Cristina Iglesis’s green- walled room allows water to stream over rocks under your feet, Aluiay Kaumakan weaves together beautiful thread as a way of rebuilding her Taiwanese homeland after a devastating typhoon; the brilliant Agnes Denes builds a tower of grasses in the gallery. It’s all reshaping, rethinking, reframing.
But most of the rest feels futile. Hito Steyerl’s wall of digital flowers looks like the inside of a WeWork, Cornelia Parker’s interview with little kids saying things like ‘the earth is getting warmer’ is painfully cloying, and the rest just falls flat.
This isn’t the most patronising, boring or sophomoric climate change exhibition we’ve had in London recently (that would be the Serpentine’s ‘Back To Earth’ in 2022), but so little of this art makes you think, or makes you feel, or tells you stories you don’t already know, or does anything for the planet.
What’s the carbon footprint of shipping all the art here, installing it, powering all the lights and films and that stupid neon? Because I’m pretty sure the best thing the Hayward could’ve done for the planet is not put this exhibition on in the first place.