Year: 2023
Type: book-review
Abstract: This is a beautifully-written, well-researched, thoughtful, generous and passionate book.It is one that seeks to make a difference not only to our knowledge of representations of landscapes by moving image artists but also to inspire new generations of eco-criticallyminded artists to discover fresh ways to communicate urgent messages about the ongoing breakdown of the natural world.The book offers innovative explorations of how the moving image continues to facilitate understandings of our relationships to 'natural' landscapes.Its central focus is on landscape in artists' film and video (primarily, but certainly not exclusively, British), and Elwes covers a very wide range of films from the 1970s to the present day.As far as I'm aware, this is the first book to do this in such a focused way and with such sustained attention to the eco-critical.Elwes is an artist, curator and critic, and a significant figure in British feminist art.As such, she is able to draw on her rich personal knowledge and experience in very striking ways, taking the reader through a series of persuasive and often self-reflective essays.The Introduction places the book within the context of the COVID pandemic by setting up a tension between wanting to engage with the landscapes of nature while at the same time acknowledging the human-induced threat of Anthropocene climate change.Elwes writes: 'Any slice of landscape that the human eye commits to paper, canvas or film encompasses a range of ecological, social, political and historical realities, many of which have been suppressed by pictorial traditions in the West' (1).Furthermore, she asks a series of important questions, such as: 'Can we forget, as we snap a glorious sunset on some tropical island resort, how here, as elsewhere, nature is suffering irreversible damage, and multinationals allied to the military-complex are, at this very moment, plundering the earth's rapidly diminishing resources?' (1).And: 'In the light of this new political and ecological sensitivity to landscape, what kinds of artworks can legitimately be made by what persuasion of artists?' (2).Elwes strongly advocates for eco-critical moving image practice, working through a discussion of a number of film-makers and films, such as Steven Ball and John Conomos's Deep Water Web (2016), for example.However, she makes it clear that she does not offer an overarching critical theory of landscape.Rather, she focuses on the vast range of work of moving image artists who continue to 'transmit from the position of engaged and passionate subjects, immersed in
Author: Paul Newland
Institution: University of Worcester
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4313645691