Contemporary art and climate change – breathing on a polluted planet.
Digital image. First version: 1991; this version: 2015
A work of environmental contemporary art concerning climate change and pollution.
This work is created in a cartoon-like style. There are several reasons for this. One is that I create quite a lot of cartoons (which have been published in newspapers such as the Guardian and magazines such as Private Eye), and another is that I think that the cartoon style is a particularly good and direct way of communicating about subjects such as the environment, global warming, pollution and the various crises that are currently afflicting our planet. One of the appeals of the cartoon art style is that it generally lacks ambiguity, so its message is clear and unmistakable, which is very important with subjects that are as important as climate change, global warming and the environmental issues.
Other contemporary art styles are often at their best when they contain a degree of uncertainty or ambiguity about what is being said, requiring the viewer to interpret the work as they see fit. Contemporary art that puts forward a message unambiguously can often tend to come across as rather dead, didactic and hectoring, which I think the cartoon style tends to avoid.
Also of course, cartoon art, due to its nature, can easily be reproduced in print or electronically without loss of quality (both physical quality and emotional quality), thus making it available to a much wider audience than most contemporary art – which can only be a good thing when the work tackles important subjects such as the environment and climate change.
