This exhibition is a sequel, building on the inaugural edition from spring 2017, and like Part I it aims to use visual culture to demonstrate the effects and raise awareness of climate change and the environment. Some very different artists and thinkers have joined forces this year, working in a range of disciplines. It's a fusion of art, science and new innovations in tech, showing different ways to track climate change and pollution, as well as ways of engage.
We're used to the focussing on the land, when we look at maps, and the sea is really just a background. Tania Kovats' steel and salt structures turns that view on its head, pointing out the vast interconnected ocean that surrounds everything. Rust, salt crystals, shiny reflections and shadows enhance her intricate forms.
Rachel Sussman's decade-long project photographs the oldest living organisms in the world. She's formed them into a timeline, putting them in the context of human activity. Again, the work brings to the forefront plants we might overlook as scene-setting, and questions their perspective on 750 million years of a world that belongs to them as much as us.
Lucy Kimbell has gone high-tech, with a prototype wallpaper that monitors air quality, changing colour in response to pollutants. Andy Owen's conceptual installation 'Whole Milk' explores innovations in farming, and the elements that go into a simple bottle of milk for your tea.
Wytham Woods put in an appearance by videolink, bringing the sounds of the woodland into the gallery, and showing the progress of the lung-shaped sculpture in the woods built of mycelium. Mycelium, the structural part of fungal life, is being pioneered as both a sustainable building material and eco-responsible packaging replacing polystyrene.
We're perilously short of optimism in today's world, with political and scientific problems often seeming too large to engage with, let alone solve. Modern Art Oxford gives us a fresh view, a moment to breathe, and a spark of hope in human ingenuity and natural resilience to tackle these monumental challenges.
