MAKING A STAND
15th of June 2023
LEEDS – YORKSHIRE, UK: Today (Thursday 15th June) commuters and visitors arriving into Leeds city centre have been greeted by an extraordinary sight. A remarkable sculptural ‘forest’ has taken root in the main public square outside Leeds railway station.
Comprising 127 seven-metre-high timber fins, this quietly powerful temporary installation entitled ‘Making A Stand’, aims to ‘disrupt’ the popular pedestrian route by creating an awe-inspiring artwork using commercially grown timber ‘borrowed’ from the construction supply chain, which can be repurposed when the work is dismantled at the end of the year.
Amidst the ongoing discourse surrounding climate protests and their impact on everyday lives, ‘Making A Stand’ is a thought-provoking artistic intervention that invites people to pause, explore and contemplate major environmental issues in a visually striking and provocative manner.
The installation is co-created by acclaimed visual artist Michael Pinsky (whose work is known for challenging the status quo on climate change and urban design), and award-winning environmental architects Studio Bark. It is one of 12 signature projects commissioned as part of LEEDS 2023’s transformational Year of Culture, and is inspired by the city’s origins as a forested area called Leodis over a thousand years ago, which gave rise to the name ‘Leeds’.
The co-creators of ‘Making A Stand’ aim to draw attention to the urgent need for the built environment industry to replace carbon-intensive materials like concrete and steel with more sustainable alternatives, such as timber. The project aims to ignite a conversation surrounding material life cycles and to demonstrate that large-scale, temporary art can also be created in a sustainable way.
The timber fins, which have been ‘borrowed’ from the supply chain at the point between felling and stacking, are positioned vertically making them quite literally ‘stand up’ like a ‘stand’[1] of trees in nature. The fins work together with a webbed canopy of steel wire ropes and steel struts, acting in tension and compression to ensure minimal damage to the wood so that it can be repurposed at the end of the year, minimizing waste while maximising opportunities for carbon capture and storage.
The project uses timber felled from sustainable forests in the UK where wood is grown for use in construction. Sliced into ‘fins’ by Whitney Sawmills in Herefordshire, the final stages of fabrication took place at Stage One, a specialist fabricator based near York.
#POLLUTION DRIFT
16th Oct – 2nd Nov 2021
Pollution Pods journey to COP26
This October, Pollution Pods by the artist Michael Pinsky will travel to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) to bring home the health impact of air pollution and the climate crisis.
Air pollution kills an estimated 7 million people globally each year. The pods will allow visitors to experience some of the worst quality air on the planet, and understand why action on air pollution is urgently needed.
The five pods will start in Granary Square, London, then disperse and drift north. Lone pods will touch down in Birmingham, Sheffield, Lancaster and Newcastle. They will reunite as a family in Glasgow on the eve of COP26, with a call for world leaders to make air pollution an explicit priority in climate action and sustainable development activities.
The Pollution Pods are a series of geodesic domes whose air quality, smell and temperature accurately recreate the pollution of five different locations on three continents: London, Beijing, São Paulo, New Delhi and Tautra, a remote peninsula in Norway. Pinsky created the pods in 2017 to test whether art can change people’s perceptions of, and actions around, climate change. Now they face their greatest challenge yet – to shift the debate on air pollution and climate change to help secure real change at COP26.
The pods will be accompanied by Ride for their Lives – staff from six UK children’s hospitals who are cycling 800km from London to Glasgow to deliver messages from the international health community including the Healthy Climate Prescription Letter, signed by 450 medical organisations across the globe.
Full details about the tour here.
HOOD is featured on SkyArts new series called Landmark. Episode 6. Other artists featured in this episode are Annie Catrell and Kevin Callaghan. Available on Freeview Channel 11. Judged by Clare Lilley and Hetan Patel. View link here.
Pollution Pods – COP25 Madrid
IFEMA
Av. del Partenón, Nº 5, 28042 Madrid, Spain2 December – 13 December 2019
The Pollution Pods are being presented by Cape Farewell and the World Health Organisation at COP25 in Madrid.
A series of domes will recreate the pollution from London, Beijing, São Paulo, New Delhi and Tautra in Norway. Forming a ring in the gardens of the Nations Headquarters, visitors will pass through the climatically controlled pods to compare the quality of polluted global environments. All five Pollution Pods are linked, so that one has to pass through all of them in order to exit the installation. This visceral experience encapsulates the sense that the world – and our own impact on it – is interconnected.
Michael Pinsky will be presenting discussing the installation at CaixaForum in Madrid, on December 12th as part of ¿ Más grados° más arte? an event organised by Art of Change 21, The event will be held in Spanish and English with simultaneous translations. Admission is free and open to all.
Pollution Pods was originally commissioned by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology for Climart and has been built with the support of BuildwithHubs. Pollution Pods has received funding from Arts Council England. The tour of Pollution Pods is managed by Cape Farewell. Pollution cocktails created are by IFF‘s global network of scent experts and dispersed using Aroma technology.
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April 18th – 25th 2018
A series of domes simulates the pollution from London, Beijing, São Paulo, New Delhi and Tautra in Norway. Forming a ring in the centre of Somerset House courtyard, visitors pass through climatically controlled pods to compare the quality of polluted global environments. All five Pollution Pods are linked, so that one has to pass through all of them in order to exit the installation. This visceral experience encapsulates the sense that the world – and our own impact on it – is interconnected.
The entry pod, emulating a peninsula in Norway uses an Airlabs filter to remove all harmful gases to create fresh air. A smorgasbord of metropolises follow, each with their own specific and nuanced polluted environments; from London’s invisible but deadly output of nitrogen oxides to New Delhi’s suffocating haze of airborne particles. The environments have been created in collaboration with chemists and fragrance experts including: Odette Toilette, International Flavors & Fragrances, Iscent and the Norwegian Institute for Air Research.
Pollution Pods was originally commissioned by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology for Climart and has been built with the support of BuildwithHubs. Pollution Pods has received funding from Arts Council England.
Photo credit: Peter Macdiarmid for Somerset House.
Film Credit: Sam Bevitt for BuildwithHubs
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Making A Stand June 20,2023