Extended Practice 2

Identify an example of extended practice which you admire: public art.

Earth from the Air, Birmingham City Centre, 2004

40 per cent of the world's population does not have electricity.
20 per cent of the world's population does not have access to safe drinking water.
826 million people are under-nourished in the world.
One in five adults is unable to either read or write; 98 per cent of them are in developing countries and 66 per cent of them are women.
Throughout the world, over 300,000 children, both boys and girls, are soldiers. Many of them aren’t even 10 years old.
The making of a personal computer necessitates 8 to 14 tons of non-renewable raw materials.
40 million people die of starvation every year in a world that produces 356 kilos of cereals per person.

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is a multi-talented photographer of world renown. In 2004 an exhibition of photographs from his Earth From the Air project was mounted in the open air around the central library and Council House in Birmingham city centre. The exhibition was on tour and had come hot-foot from London where it had been outside the Natural History Museum for nearly two years.

The spectacular images were taken from a helicopter as Arthus-Bertrand flew around the world seeking out its most spectacular features.

Coeur de Voh

Interspersed between the large-scale photographs were the kind of messages which make people stop dead in their tracks. This was the point of the pictures - not just to look good, but to bring home the stark facts about how people live across the planet.

Because the exhibition is mounted outdoors in a public space, it is accessible to everyone. Naturally, someone has to pay for it (the tour is sponsored by Birds Eye) but there can be no better way of taking art to the public than an open-air, free exhibition. This one goes one step further by combining Arthus-Bertrand's spectacular imagery with hard-hitting ecological and socio-economic statistics.

URLs

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Earth From the Air

Bibliography

Arthus-Bertrand, Y et al. Being a Photographer. pub. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. USA 2004.

Brown, L & Arthus Bertrand, Y. The Earth From the Air pub. Thames and Hudson Ltd. UK 2002.

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