Climate Project 2022
You and I Are Earth was the culmination of a year-long project on global, weather events, a series of paintings based on the portrayal of these events experienced through the TV, news and social media. The objective to record an entire year of reports, effectively freeze-framed fleeting images from various media, allowing time for more reflection of their serious nature, and collectively observing the entire picture of climate change over 12 months. The intention was for the collection of paintings to be exhibited in its entirety in chronological order, with patterns of weather moving sequentially across the paintings, a repetition and rhythm became apparent and revealed power in the magnitude of climate change.
The project was exhibited in Norwich at Anteros, Gallery East in Woodbridge and at Firstsite in Colchester, October 2023- March 2024.
Using a limited colour palette created a unification across the work, tying them together as one body of work.
The project came about when I saw a film report on TV of the aftermath of cyclone Idai. The footage was of a man wading through a flood looking for clean water. The composition echoed a painting I’d made previously so I took photos of the screen and painted it. I didn’t realise how this painting would change my work at the time but it interested me to paint so immediately. I began collecting similar images in a folder on my phone; screenshots of videos, news reports, storm chaser and amateur recordings of extreme natural events.
The initial title of Climate Project 2022 was revised to You and I are Earth, inspired by an inscribed plate, dated 1661, found in a London sewer and which is now exhibited in the Welcome Collection. It explains in one perfectly formed phrase, our connectivity to nature, succinctly conveying the overall meaning and purpose of the project, fuelled by my own frustration at the lack of urgency and progress politically.
“We often forget that we are nature. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.” Andy Goldsworthy