LONDON.- The Royal Academy of Arts and the National Trust today announced a major new public art commission to go on display on the façade of the Royal Academy’s 6 Burlington Gardens as part of the forthcoming exhibition GSK Contemporary, Earth: Art of a changing world, which opens on 3 December 2009. The commission represents the first collaboration between these two major cultural organisations and, at the end of the London exhibition in 2010, the work will tour selected National Trust properties.
CO2 morrow, a spectacular 8 metre diameter artwork by artists Marcos Lutyens and Alessandro Marianantoni, is inspired by a zeolite, a molecule that scrubs carbon dioxide from pollution sources. The installation, made from recyclable carbon fibre, will be sited on the façade of 6 Burlington Gardens, and will show the fluctuating levels of CO2 , the principal contributor to greenhouse gases, in the atmosphere, drawing on data from CO2 measuring systems monitored by the School of Environmental Sciences, East Anglia. The work will be lit by 1,440 individually addressable LED lights that will make it a beacon on dark winter nights. Following the close of GSK Contemporary: Earth, CO2 morrow will tour selected National Trust properties in 2010 and will draw on real time CO2 readings from these locations, bringing the issue of climate change further into focus and allowing the work to be seen by a wider audience across England. The tour will be supported by an education programme.
This collaboration supports the National Trust's environmental and contemporary art activities and the RA’s commitment to presenting cutting-edge contemporary art, as well as, for the first time, uniting two major cultural organisations in their focus on such a significant issue.
Marcos Lutyens is an intermedia artist who has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale of Art and shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the iMage Festival in Italy and the Fierce! Festival in the United Kingdom. Building on his investigations into consciousness and social dynamics, Lutyens has worked on large scale projects that involve interactivity, the environment and new technologies. Works include data tracking, feedback from vehicle traffic and pedestrian flows, pollution and air quality levels, brain wave monitoring and other objective factors that are generally invisible to the casual observer, and yet as important to us as the subjective.
Alessandro Marianantoni works on projects across different fields: culture, technology, environment and art with a multi-disciplinary approach. He has produced several interactive art installations exhibited between Los Angeles and Italy. Based in Los Angeles he often travels to Italy where he started MEDIARS, an Experimental Center focused on Cultural Heritage and Technology. As programme director, he runs the Art, Technology and Cultural Heritage international summer programme in the Castle of Contigliano.
