Environment, Ecology, Sustainability is a research site and visual reading group with a focus on material that addresses the climate emergency through both historical and contemporary art practice.

The aim is to examine urgent themes through the aesthetic and formal language of specific artworks and the research contexts and wider frameworks in which art is made. The readings intend to examine and confront the root causes of the environmental emergency by examining the conflictual tensions inherent between planetary sustainability, capitalism and human and nonhuman exploitation.

This research site was initially provoked by the current Covid-19 situation as a means to explore and test thinking, creative methodologies and practices that support sustainable action and change. Readings are suggested by participants, and guests are regularly invited to present their research in an informal discursive environment.

Past participants have included:

• Curator Olivier Heron from Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art giving a virtual tour and discussion about Otobong Nkanga’s show From Where I Stand.
• Katherine Jackson, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, presented her research on Barbara Steveni and the APG Art in Context: The Work of Barbara Steveni.
• UCL Art History doctoral student Edward Christie discussing Rasheed Araeen's concept of 'ecoaesthetics'.

The project is co-ordinated by Onya McCausland, Senior Research Fellow.