Gaia Project presents... URBAN/ECOLOGY

Gaia Project is very proud to announce the launch of its inaugural environmental artist’s project exclusively in Liverpool, European Capital of Culture 2008. In association with Independents Biennial 2008.

Website: www.urban-ecology-liverpool.wetpaint.com
Contact: info_gaia_project@yahoo.co.uk

What is Gaia Project?

Gaia Project is an independent environmental artist’s group. The size and constitution of our practice changes in relation to the nature of our collective projects. We are dedicated to promoting a wider public understanding and appreciation of the holistic inter-relationship between the visual arts, landscape, and the natural environment. Our objective is to carry this out through the co-ordination of site-specific cross-disciplinary visual arts projects, which aim to engage artists and local communities in an open dialogue. We work exclusively with artists who live and work in Britain and who share an active concern for climate change and ecology through their practice.

What is URBAN/ECOLOGY?

Created by Gaia Project, URBAN/ECOLOGY is a cross-disciplinary environmental arts project. Our primary objective is to promote the Gaia Project ‘art-ecology’ philosophy to the wider public and to put this on Liverpool’s cultural agenda in 2008. We will endeavour to achieve this by working with a group of artists who will collectively exist as the URBAN/ECOLOGY project team. Selected artists have been invited to engage with specific locations throughout the city, the central focus of this interaction will be the ecological and environmental characteristics of the given places. Natural phenomena will provide the inspiration!

Liverpool’s ‘urban ecology’ is made most visible and accessible to us through the wildlife in parks, rivers and other green spaces for example. Evidence of this thriving ecology is also sometimes visible in places of dereliction and urban decay - brownfield spaces that exist on the very margins of public use and accessibility. How we interact with this urban ecology and how we use these spaces is infrequently an issue addressed in the arts from a historical, social and environmental perspective. It is these green pockets and marginalised in-between spaces that will be the primary subject for Gaia Project in Liverpool. The priority for the artists will be to publicly encourage an understanding of the crucial relevance that ecology has in our daily lives, and subsequently to explore how climate change is affecting the environments in which we live.

Participating Artists?

Janette Porter (tbc), James Brady, David Haley, Jacqueline McCormick (tbc), Scott Thurston, Tim Pugh, Sarah Hardacre, Lee Patterson (tbc), Anne Earnshaw, Tenneson & Dale, Rebecca McKnight

Collectively our artists practice across a wide variety of disciplines: multi-media, installation, performance, sculpture, earthwork, poetry, video, photography, sound, painting, and dance. The URBAN/ECOLOGY project will harness all the artists’ expertise and knowledge to create and facilitate a programme of informative and provocative public events and artworks. These will take place across the city and also in our exclusive Gaia Cabinet space located at the heart of the historic Albert Dock.

Location