Amongst London’s abundant sciart repertoire,
Invisible Dust’s motives remain clear and their
actions progressive, as the projects collected by
the organization are ever changing in both content and form. The malleability of the Invisible
Dust program is adapted to respond to emerging environmental issues, rather than proven,
accepted, and often outdated principles. Founded in 2009 by Alice Sharp, the relatively young
organization has become the adoptive guardian
of many projects and artists who otherwise
would not have support due to their unconventional disciplinary classifications. Sharp, a
practicing curator since 1997, has a keen understanding of the magnitude of public artworks
in regards to social engagement. Sharp’s confidence shows—she is not shy of pushing boundaries of art and new media, urging the discipline
out of its conventional boundaries towards an
amalgamation of social, scientific, and researchbased practice.
Particularly relevant to London’s recent air
quality issues, documented and followed by the
organization’s aforementioned online monitor,
Invisible Dust’s biggest project to date addressed issues of air pollution, winning Lord
Mayor of London’s U.K. Sustainable City Award
presented for “outstanding contributions to en-
hancing air quality” in 2011. The project, “Invisible Breath,” included works by artists Dryden
Goodwin, Faisal Abdu’Allah, and HeHe, and
wascomplemented by educational events for a
target audience of families, schools, and young
people.
For this series, art-based research association
HeHe recreated the tragedy of the 2010 Gulf
of Mexico oil spill in miniature. A sound, video,
and mildly pyrotechnic sculpture installation,
Is there a horizon in the deep water, was shown at
the Cambridge Science Festival. This work was
followed by Faisal Abdu’Allah’s Double Pendulum, a video piece documenting the respiratory
lives of elite athletes and the implications of air
pollution on these athletes’ health. The film was
screened at a pertinent time, a year before the
2012 Summer Olympics in London, at an even
more pertinent location just outside the London Olympic Stadium. Artist Dryden Goodwin’s piece Breathe completed the “Invisible
Breath” series. Goodwin’s work evolved from
pencil drawings of a young boy breathing, into
an animation, further spawning an interactive
map of London’s air pollution and a discussion
about air quality concerns at the U.K. Parliament’s House of Commons.
Breathe
by Dryden
Goodwin
(2012). Image
courtesy the
artist.
38
SciArt in America June 2014