Five things to know about Dear Earth

The Hayward Gallery’s summer show explores themes of care, hope, and emotional and spiritual connection with our environment

Through their moving use of video installations, living plants, running water and other media, the 15 artists included in the exhibition highlight the immediacy of the climate crisis for our natural world, and the fact that, for many artists, art and activism are often inseparable. Here are five things to know about this exhibition, part of Planet Summer, our season of programming with a focus on our planet.

‘Caring is a form of resistance’

Artist Otobong Nkanga’s words were a key inspiration for Dear Earth. Her In Pursuit of Bling series features in the exhibition, examining industrial mining and the true cost of ‘bling’. Humanity’s impact on the environment is also evident in Daiara Tukano’s paintings, tributes to Europe’s lost forests. She belongs to the Yépá Mahsã people (widely known as Tukano) who believe that human beings are equal participants in a dialogue with everything that exists.

Artists are inspired by their deep concern for the environment

Jenny Kendler's sculpture Birds Watching III features the eyes of one hundred bird species facing extinction. This commission is made in collaboration with London Zoo, and once Dear Earth closes, the work will relocate there.

Andrea Bowers’ hanging sculpture Memorial to Arcadia Woodlands Clear-Cut (Green, Violet, and Brown) commemorates her attempt to save a forest in California, which saw her tying herself to an oak tree.

Dear Earth takes you on a voyage from the nearby to cultures across the world

The exhibition traverses the swamps of Louisiana, the depleted Amazonian rainforest and a Namibian mine.

Aluaiy Kaumakan, a member of Taiwan’s Paiwan Nation, creates textile sculptures that are intimately connected to her ancestral culture. After a 2009 typhoon displaced the Indigenous Paiwan community, Kaumakan responded by working with other displaced women to pass on the traditional Paiwan weaving techniques.

Nearer to home, Ackroyd & Harvey’s portraits of London-based activists are grown from grass seed, highlighting the sitters’ dedication to our planet and embodying the four resources that we need to sustain life on Earth: air, seed, soil and water.

Green ideology meets green artworks

The artist Hito Steyerl highlights the carbon footprint of the technological world in her installation Green Screen, combining a LED screen constructed from bottles and crates, and a living wall of plants. The bioelectrical signals from the plants are converted into sounds and images which are then displayed on the LED wall, where each bottle acts as a single pixel.

The exhibition revisits the work of pioneering environmental artist Agnes Denes

Agnes Denes has been creating outdoor works that engage with nature since the 1960s. A recurring motif in her work is the pyramid, which the artist sees as representing both ‘the past and the possible future we will invent’. Denes’ The Living Pyramid has become one of the artist’s most iconic works. Recreated for the Hayward Gallery, the five-metre tall pyramid is planted with wildflowers and grasses.