Rachael Champion

In this era of the Anthropocene*, it is no longer possible to imagine the natural and the artificial, nature and culture, as separate worlds or environments. Humanity, through industry and technology, has transformed the earth, making use of natural resources to facilitate the development of increasingly advanced systems. As we deepen our understanding of the ecological problems now being faced as a consequence of these developments, issues of human responsibility and how our relationship with nature should evolve come to the fore. In this exhibition, which brings together the pioneering work of Agnes Denes with contemporary explorations by Rachel Pimm and Rachael Champion, the relationship between the environment and its human inhabitants is described, questioned and imagined across media and across generations.

Underlying the distinct and diverse practices of these three artists is a refusal to work within reductive and traditional binaries in exploring the relationship between humanity and nature. There is a marked turning away, initiated in Denes’ radical focus on eco-political issues, from the philosophies of the first generation of ‘Land artists’ for whom discovery of a new medium and context – the natural landscape – allowed them to break new creative ground, mastering nature in the service of artistic creation. Rejected also is the traditional harmonious ‘earth mother’ perspective as inadequate to encompass our complex, indeterminate relationship with the natural world. Instead, as the works in this exhibition suggest, art (the expression or application of human skill) which incorporates nature becomes a symbolic means through which to collapse the binary between the natural and the synthetic.

Agnes Denes’ iconic, influential 1982 Wheatfield project, in which the artist planted and harvested two acres of wheat on the Battery Park landfill in New York’s financial district, serves as the starting point for the exhibition. At the time of its conception, the project functioned as a paradoxical statement, a searing interrogation of humanity’s evolving priorities regarding economics, world trade, waste management and ecological concerns. The magnificent fields of wheat depicted in the series of photographs on display, now the site for a billion-dollar luxury office and apartment complex, stand as a provocative reminder of the artist’s utopian vision, in which human activity and creation could work in the service and stewardship of the planet.

Alongside Denes’s historic project, this exhibition features two very recent works by Rachael Champion and Rachel Pimm. Champion’s large-scale construction Raze Bloom (2015), a commentary on our contrived engagement with nature within our built environments, references the current proliferation of development sites, in which entire neighbourhoods are ‘razed’ to make space for new, rapidly built, constructions, both in its title and in the installation’s material, formal presence. An abstract architectural structure composed of industrial materials and ecological matter ranging from aluminium scaffolding to grass turf and aquatic plants, the installation itself becomes a synthetic eco-system requiring its own life support systems to sustain it within the gallery space.

Meanwhile, in Pimm’s video India Rubber (2015, soundrack by Graham Cunnington of Test Dept), the artist adopts the role of documentary-maker, following the evolution of the finite natural resource of rubber, as it is transformed from plant to product, from nature to culture. The film’s specific focus provides an original, sharply trained perspective on the intersections between technology, industry and economy in the 21st century, bringing the viewer into close contact with material processes which often seem geographically distant or intellectually abstract.

In bringing these three positions together, this exhibition demonstrates the varied possibilities for encounters between art and nature, whether through landscape intervention, architectural installation or a documentary film. Each work, through its insistent rooting in a specific medium and a specific time, forms its own unique visual exploration of the shifting boundaries between nature and artifice, between humanity and the natural world.

*Anthropocene (of Greek roots: anthropo- (Greek: ἄνθρωπος ) meaning "human" and -cene meaning "new") is a proposed epoch that begins when human activities started to have a significant global impact on Earth's ecosystems. The term was coined in the 1980s by ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer and has been widely popularized by atmospheric chemist, Paul Crutzen, who regards the influence of human behavior on the Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological epoch for its lithosphere. As of April 2015, the term has not been adopted formally as part of the official nomenclature of the geological field of study.

O | an afternoon of talks and ideas around the spherical, the biological, the elemental, and the oxygenated | Rachael Champion, Rachel Pimm, and invited special guests

Hales Gallery, Saturday 12 December, 2 PM

A speech sound, an ideal or space, an object that can be carved out.

Join us for an evening of talks and ideas around the spherical, the biological, the elemental, and the oxygenated. Featuring presentations and investigations from Rachael Champion, Rachel Pimm, and invited special guests.

Agnes Denes (b. 1931, Budapest, Hungary) was raised in Sweden and educated in the United States (New School and Columbia University in New York). Since her exhibition career began in the 1960s, she has participated in more than 450 exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the world including, among others, solo shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1974); the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (1979) and retrospective surveys at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. (1992); the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pa. (2003); and the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary (2008). Her work has also been featured in such international surveys as the Biennale of Sydney (1976); Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany (1977); the Venice Biennale (1978, 1980, 2001), and more recently The Last Freedom: From the Pioneers of Land Art of the 1960s to Nature in Cyberspace, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz, Germany (October 16, 2011); Systems, Actions & Processes: 1965 - 1975, PROA Foundation, Buenos Aires (through September, 2011); Erre: Variations Labyrinthiques, Centre Pompidou, Metz (September 12, 2011 - March 5, 2012); and Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph: 1964 - 1977, Art Institute of Chicago (December 11, 2011 – March 11, 2012).

Rachael Champion (b. 1982, New York, USA) graduated with a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from the Royal Academy Schools in 2010. Champion has been awarded the Arts Foundation Award for sculpture (2013) and the Red Mansion Art Prize (2010). In 2012, she was the Camden Arts Centre 'Artist in Residence'. In 2016, Champion will complete a permanent installation on Sarvisalo, The Zabludowicz Collection's outpost in Finland. Champion's work has been exhibited at a number of recognised international spaces including Modern Art Oxford (UK), Zabludowicz Collection, London (UK), Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (US), Bold Tendencies Sculpture Project, London (UK), Enclave Projects, London (UK), and Horatio Junior, London (UK). In 2015, her installation Plough Layer Source Rupture was featured in the Discoveries section at Art Basel Hong Kong. Champion lives and works in London, UK.

Rachel Pimm (born 1984, Harare, Zimbabwe) Pimm received an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2013. She co-founded the artist-run project Auto Italia South East in 2007 and since 2012 has worked collaboratively with MoreUtopia! Her work has been included in recent programmes at the Chisenhale Gallery, Royal Academy, Serpentine Gallery, London (all 2015); Zabludowicz Collection, London; South London Gallery, London; Enclave Gallery, London (all 2014); Auto Italia, London; SPACE, London; Can Felipe, Barcelona (all 2013); Milton Keynes Gallery; Ibid Projects, London; and The Architecture Foundation, London (all 2012). In 2015 Pimm was shortlisted for the Converse X Dazed Emerging Artist Award. Pimm lives and works in London, UK.