AER x Earth Day 2023: Art for the Environment artists in conversation

Launched in 2015 by Professor Lucy Orta and supported by UAL’s Post-Grad Community, AER has been providing postgraduates with the exceptional opportunity to take part in fully funded residencies in partnership with internationally renowned host institutions, to live a unique experience while exploring concerns that define the 21st century.

As part of The Green House’s opening, the 2022 residents came together to reflect on the impact and legacy of their residencies and to reflect on their creative role in envisioning a world of tomorrow.

Sara Kelly

Sara is a tapestry weaver living and working in Deptford, South-East London.

She creates tapestries and site-specific artworks, working primarily within the field of weaving. Her work explores the intersection between craft and collaborative making to address a longstanding preoccupation with knowledge sharing and material cultures.

She was a resident at Thread, a cultural centre that allows local and international artists to live and work in Sinthian, a rural village in Tambacounda, the southeastern region of Senegal. Supported by the The Albers Foundation, Thread’s socio-cultural role is most pronounced in its function as an agricultural hub for Sinthian and the surrounding villages. Thread was designed to be a flexible and evolving public space, and the local population uses it in a variety of ways.

Marie-Louise Jones

Marie-Louise Jones explores the dis-ease of contemporary society through merging the organic with machine-made modernity, reflecting on materialities and architectures of the built environment to investigate worldbuilding/reworlding, nature connection/disconnection, to inspire ways of thinking, acting and making change. She has exhibited at Barbican Centre (2023), Saatchi Gallery (2021), Tate Modern (2020), was recipient of an Arts Council England award (2022) and awarded the Mona Hatoum Scholarship for her masters at Central Saint Martins (2020/21)

Alongside other UAL graduates, she resided at LABVERDE: Art Immersion Programme in the Amazon. The programme was created to strengthen the limits of art through a broad array of experiences, knowledge sets and cultural perspectives involving art, science and nature. The programme’s main goal is to promote artistic creation through a constructive debate about environmental issues supported by theory, data and life experiences in the Amazon rainforest.

Elizabeth Cardozo-Richards

Lizzie Cardozo is a multi-disciplinary artist who creates large sculptures and installations, more recently she has been exploring ways in which to archive the body through processes such as cyanotype print making.

Lizzie was located at Domaine de Boisbuchet, France. This programme integrates innovative architecture and design into the splendid setting of a 19th century French country estate, offering a unique creative and collaborative environment for people of all cultures to share. Boisbuchet's intensive workshop programmes invest deeply in cultures that respect the past and build for the future, at the same time stimulating research that promotes a more sustainable relationship between the natural and the man-made.

Molly Macleod

Blurring the lines between art and science Molly Macleod has grown crystals that hear sounds, cultured the microbial imprint of TATE Modern visitors, formed pigment from her own skin, created a microphone out of carbon from her own body, revealed the sonic

world from inside trees and tapped into the electrical currents hidden within the soil beneath our feet.

Like Marie-Louise, Molly was part of the group at LABVERDE