The Shifting Landscape: Environmental Art

It is human nature to seek for new, exciting and the unexpected that would break the bonds from the ordinary and the known. At the same time, we seek beauty and balance within ourselves and of our environment. At the intersection of these two values, the radical emerges— an evolution that changes our landscape. In relation to our environment, the art movement shifted from the traditional displays in galleries and museum to the natural environment. Environmental art, land art, earth art, earthworks or art in nature, in whichever name we want to call it, emerges in the 1960s as “a release from the theoretical arguments concerning abstract expressionism, minimalism, and theatricality” (Thornes, 2008). The outcome from critiques of the conventional arts that it was deemed as out-dated and not in harmony with the natural environment. Unlike paintings, environmental art is more about human experiences, engaging with art and its environment. It is what that links the aesthetics and the environment which impacts upon our feelings and our everyday experience of our environment that is often taken for granted (ibid).

 

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