A group show organised by UAL's Climate Emergerncy Network to mark Earth Day 2023.
Phil showed two works:
The Second Elizabethan Age – all that glistens is not gold
The Second Elizabethan Age has just drawn to a close in the UK. Elizabeth ll’s 70 year reign coincided with unprecedented growth in prosperity (even if increasingly unequal), but this has come at a cost – a sustained rise in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere from 310ppm in 1953 to 419ppm in August 2022. This work makes this cost visible as a starting point for wider discussion and action.
This work raises questions about whose golden age the last 70 years have been? And what has the cost been, both in terms of climate change and in widening inequalities between the western democracies and everyone else and within those democracies where income gaps have widened enormously. Creative solutions, creative inspiration, creative engagement with communities of place & interest are central to achieving climate justice.
Wetter: The Waters Are Coming
This work was in preparation for Phil’s MA degree show at Central Saint Martins in 2020 when Covid hit. It was also a starting point for the project to programme the fountains in Granary Square taking place from 18th – 23rd April. It was left behind on lockdown and only fully recovered in summer 2021. Since then a prototype has been twice exhibited (photos). This will be the first opportunity to exhibit it as originally conceived – albeit as a prototype.
A free-standing installation presents viewers with 2m columns of water in the Gallery, such that they witness the reality of 2m rise in sea levels. My original intention was to put the, now probable scale of sea level rise in front of people, to better understand what is happening as a result of global warming. Two tubes are marked with the rising IPPC 1999 to 2019 estimated hights of maximum sea level rise this century .
