Award 2021
Welcome to the Social Art Award 2021 – Online Gallery!
We are grateful for the many inspiring contributions from artists around the world. The selected works reflect a broad spectrum of contemporary social art practices and explore new relationships between humans, nature, and technology. They address themes such as ecological regeneration, climate justice, sustainable futures, social resilience, and more-than-human perspectives.
Below you will find the submissions from the Social Art Award 2021 – New Greening edition that passed the initial jury round. The Online Gallery offers public visibility to these works and encourages dialogue around their ideas and approaches; it does not replace the final jury decision.
Thank you to all artists for sharing your visionary and committed work. We invite you to explore the gallery and engage with the perspectives shaping New Greening.
Yarden
Jo Howell
I live in a city where many of us don't have gardens. For the last 9 years I have created a Yarden in the back yard. Reclaiming grey space for green. I use the yarden plants as source materials for my cyanotype prints. Poem Hidden behind familiar red bricks And living on the grey concrete Is the potted urban woodland. Salvaged wood and borrowed rocks, Upturned buckets and unused flower pots Bring staggering heights like mountain tops. Real rebellious greenery populating dark places. This place. So out of place, and yet so necessary. Air feels more breathable, and my eyes more relaxed. Forgotten masterpieces become accidental terrariums And joy is achieved through considered observation. Peace. Ignore the seagulls and sirens. Transient oranges, pinks, blues, and yellows scattered like confetti. Tiny landscape with large ambitious implications. Taking back the unyielding bleakness of the City one green stem at a time. Yarden rainforest Our last bastion for urban nature. Oh how Anna would be proud. n.b. Anna refers to Anna Atkins - the first person to use photography to illustrate her scientific studies. She used the above process called cyanotype, and she produced five copies of her book in 1858. I combine horticulture, history, and humanity in my artworks and poetry. The image below is called Herbarium and shows cuttings from the yarden.
I live in a city where many of us don't have gardens. For the last 9 years I have created a Yarden in the back yard. Reclaiming grey space for green. I use the yarden plants as source materials for my cyanotype prints. Poem Hidden behind familiar red bricks And living on the grey concrete Is the potted urban woodland. Salvaged wood and borrowed rocks, Upturned buckets and unused flower pots Bring staggering heights like mountain tops. Real rebellious greenery populating dark places. This place. So out of place, and yet so necessary. Air feels more breathable, and my eyes more relaxed. Forgotten masterpieces become accidental terrariums And joy is achieved through considered observation. Peace. Ignore the seagulls and sirens. Transient oranges, pinks, blues, and yellows scattered like confetti. Tiny landscape with large ambitious implications. Taking back the unyielding bleakness of the City one green stem at a time. Yarden rainforest Our last bastion for urban nature. Oh how Anna would be proud. n.b. Anna refers to Anna Atkins - the first person to use photography to illustrate her scientific studies. She used the above process called cyanotype, and she produced five copies of her book in 1858. I combine horticulture, history, and humanity in my artworks and poetry. The image below is called Herbarium and shows cuttings from the yarden.