How can creativity help us live in harmony with nature? – Dominika Jankowska, Adapt Transform co-curator
This is Adapt Transform Stories, a co-created digital series exploring community responses to urban design and creativity. Part of the current Adapt Transform exhibition, in partnership with Oxford Brookes University, this week we’re exploring the timely Environmental stories featured in the exhibition.
Green Arts Oxfordshire, Art Can Save The World, 2022. Adapt Transform, installation view at Modern Art Oxford, 2022. Photo by Stu Allsopp.
Adapt Transform reminds us of the importance of thinking creatively in response to the climate crisis. Green Arts Oxfordshire Network exists to unite Oxfordshire’s artists and cultural organisations in their work to tackle the climate and ecological emergency. Art Can Save The World (2022) is a creative display of community participation from a Green Arts Oxfordshire Network event that took place in 2022, inviting us to consider how collective action can spark creative projects in response to the climate crisis.
Mark James, The Campus, 1996. Adapt Transform, installation view at Modern Art Oxford, 2022. Photo by Ben Westoby
Mark James, is an ecologically minded artist who presents a series of environmentally themed works for Adapt Transform. The Campus (1996) is a painting described by James as an “infinite multiverse, and also an ideal,” where it depicts an otherworldly scene where architecture harmoniously fuses with nature. New works 12 Haumeas and IMGHaumea (both from 2022) explore innovative maritime responses to our rising sea levels, where James’ own catamaran design including features such as, “a large deck area for solar cells,” and the potential for “(ecological) travel without using fuel.”
The Urban Nature Lab, Lego flood model, 2018. Adapt Transform, Modern Art Oxford, 2022. Photo by Stu Allsopp
Also featured are The Urban Nature Lab, an Oxford-based group of environmental scientists, engineers and consultants working on projects to plan, design and deliver nature-based urban design solutions. Visitors to Adapt Transform can view the work Lego Flood Model (2018), a large physical flood model of the city of Oxford. The Lab explains how they regularly use the Lego model as a game to engage with school children, who discuss urban flood management action as the lego structure is gradually flooded with running water.
Ash Goller, Shifting towards Sharing with The Artisan Swap Shop, 2022. Adapt Transform, installation view at The Glass Tank Gallery at Oxford Brookes University, 2022. Photo by Ben Westoby
Oxford Brookes University BA Fine Art student, Ash Goller presents Shifting towards Sharing with The Artisan Swap Shop (2022), an inspiring project designed to reduce waste and carbon emissions during a global climate emergency. Displayed in Adapt Transform in the form of twelve hanging banners made from recycled materials, the work prompts us to think about the ways we can use our creativity to help through the sharing and reusing of materials, and the creation of a circular economy among fellow students.
Environmental works like these inspire us to think, learn and act more creatively in response to the climate crisis. In the words of Green Arts Oxfordshire Network, together the works aim to explore how we might move from climate “anxiety and denial to optimism and activism.”
Follow Adapt Transform Stories next week, where our focus will be on International stories in the Adapt Transform exhibition.
You can visit the exhibition Adapt Transform across two sites – Modern Art Oxford until 18 September and The Glass Tank Gallery at Oxford Brookes University until 11 September.
Want to get involved in Adapt Transform Stories? How can creativity help us live in harmony with nature? Sign up to MAO Studio and leave a comment to join in the conversation.