Radical Nature at the Barbican

radical nature? sorry, i don't get it... neither 'radical' nor 'nature' are being discussed much in this exhibition, and a lot of the exhibits feel rather gimmicky, naef, in fact. cut up a tree and reassemble it, let a couple of pseudo rain forest trees grow at an angel of 90 degrees within the gallery space, stuff a wolf and put it on a trailer (to comment on the, quote-unquote, 'traveling circus/carnevalesque-like commodity that nature has become' - bless the good person who wrote that review) -

i want my money back!! - but what was i hoping for?

hoping to look at un-green-clicheed takes on nature, for a start. the whole exhibition feels rather like being inside the womb of a no-questions-asked south ken wholefoods than being in the hands of a curator willing to deal with less kitschy and more relevant contemporary artists - i'm thinking loud here of steve kurtz (bio art), natalie jeremijenko (environmental art), maybe even edward burtinsky (photography), and most definitely the NASA engineers (thanks to bldgblog for the great image find)... all of whom radicalise nature, it's meaning, fabrication and utopia in different ways.

it is striking how the old grandmasters joseph beuys and robert smithson manage to shine the most in the show, roughly 40 years after their peak. my one shining exception is agnes denes and her wheatfield project, and i am looking forward to visit it offsite in action @dalston from mid july.

some public pictures of Radical Nature can be found here on the barbican site and here on the guardian site.