I was invited to present a paper at the Horasis Asia Meeting in Kitakyushu, Japan, on November 2022. This was a major conference in which sustainability, and climate and ecological crisis were discussed across disciplines.
My paper focused on Art as an agent for change, and I discussed works by artist duo Ackroyd & Harvey, my own work and also work by NUA undergraduate student Rollo Timothy George.
The work Stranded, by Ackroyd & Harvey, pictured below, promotes 'understanding of how the ocean absorbs vast quantities of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuel and how in the last two hundred years the chemistry of the ocean has changed for the first time in millions of years, giving unambiguous evidence that climate change in our lifetime is caused by anthropogenic emissions.'
The work Fire Extinguisher, by Rollo Timothy George, a Second Year Fine Art student at NUA , is a piece that speaks of man made of wild fires, deforestation and other anthropogenically caused ecological disasters. It is made of the very material which the object is supposed to protect and some natural marks of the tree have been left untouched to remind the viewer of its precedence and of the life, uniqueness and autonomy of each individual tree.
My work Red Hot Green House, an installation made in collaboration with Philips and Polysolar, featured a green house made of glass solar panels which powered an interactive light system that had been programmed with the colour scale of global temperature from 1850 to 2021. The light changed from blue to pink to red in the space of 24 hours following the same pattern as the graph. The work was installed next to King's College chapel, in Cambridge, UK.
The trip in itself was inspiring and I had the opportunity to visit Tokyo and Kyoto as well as Kitakyushu, and to explore many aspects of Japan's culture, such as the tea ceremony, Hokusai's exhibition of works, performances of koto and sakuhashi and Japanese cuisine.