This international group exhibition explored the ways in which young artists, many of whom were showing their work in the UK for the first time, were reinterpreting the classical subject of nature in art.
Featured artists: Rachel Berwick (US), Michel Blazy (France), Mat Collishaw (UK), Olafur Eliasson (Denmark), Cerith Wyn Evans (UK), Tom Friedman (US), Anya Gallaccio (UK), Rodney Graham (Canada), Henrik Håkansson (Sweden), Tim Hawkinson (US), Nina Katchadourian (US), Tony Matelli (US), Roxy Paine (US), Yoshihiro Suda (Japan) and Yutaka Sone (Japan).
The natural world is often seen to exist behind glass – whether through the screen of the television, a computer monitor, the car windshield or the museum display case. This constant mediation can be described as a kind of ‘greenhouse effect’ a closing off of nature beneath a bell jar. For the artists in this exhibition, many of whom live in cities, the most ordinary aspects of the natural world have become curious and exotic. The subject of their works is seemingly mundane – a delicate spider’s web, life-like weeds or even a simple house fly. However, they are not primarily interested in generating a sense of awe of the natural world, but in playing with the clichés and conventions of how we think about nature and culture.
Visitors to the exhibition encountered a rain shower (Eliasson), a field of wild mushrooms (Paine), jungle parrots speaking the extinct language of the May-por-e tribe (Berwick), and an upside-down jungle, in what seemed like a greenhouse gone awry, a topsy-turvy reflection of the manicured park of Kensington Gardens outside the Serpentine’s windows. But the viewer could never be fully certain whether what they saw was ‘real’ or artificial. In this way, The Greenhouse Effect playfully asked us to reconsider our relationship to representations of nature, whether in works of art or in the manufactured natural environments in which we live.
An additional component of the exhibition took place at The Natural History Museum with a newly commissioned work by Henrik Håkansson using the Museum’s Wildlife Garden. This partnership coincided with the conference Nature’s Treasure Houses organised by The Natural History Museum for the new Millennium in which specialists across disciplines considered the interconnection between the arts, sciences and humanities.
The Greenhouse Effect was co-curated by Lisa Corrin and Ralph Rugoff.