ABSTRACT
Artists in Britain have long represented their environment through static drawings, paintings, and photographs. More recently, as sculpture itself has transformed into the “expanded field,” contemporary object makers have embraced elemental processes within their work, integrating and highlighting material change over time. This chapter explores how contemporary artists guide viewers to reconsider their relationships to the environment by at once representing and staging physical transformations. This investigation examines strategies used to depict the relationship between the modern body and the environment, including phase changes such as freezing, hardening, wilting, and melting. Sculptures by Marc Quinn, Zuzanna Janin, Anya Gallaccio, and Andy Goldsworthy highlight the threat, effects, and consequences of material changes within our environments. Either as negative object lessons or through literal examples, these works promote an expansive and self-effacing view of what it means to be human, today. These time-specific works made in the context of climate change, political ecology, and transhumanism foreground physical processes to stimulate reflection and action. Considering how they do so enables us to reflect on how sculpture in Britain addresses that which is immaterial, through material means.
