UEL academic floods light onto climate change
Tuesday 21 February 2012
Following its official launch last week, renowned artist and UEL academic Michael Pinsky’s new work, PLUNGE, will be inviting people to look up and contemplate how climate change will transform the capital over the next 1000 years.
Having exhibited across the World from TATE Britain to the Armory Centre of the Arts in Los Angeles, Michael Pinsky is an artist used to working on a grand scale and PLUNGE is no exception. Blue neon rings, set at precisely 28 metres above sea level, will be visible on familiar icons across London. Currently on the Seven Dials Sundial pillar in the heart of Covent Garden’s theatre district, the exhibit will then move to Paternoster Square adjoining St Paul’s Cathedral and Duke of York’s column overlooking St James’s Park and the Mall.
As the glaciers melt and temperatures rise, triggering thermal expansion of the oceans, 28 metres is the height, backed by the latest scientific evidence, to which water levels are expected to rise over the next 1000 years, should we fail to heed the threat of global warming. PLUNGE then is both a work of art and a social comment on the dramatic effects of climate change.
Mark Ball, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of LIFT, the organisation which commissioned the project, said: “Our ambition for this commission was to create a major public artwork for London that tackled the subject of climate change. We firmly believe that artists have the power to make us stop and look again at the world around us, and Michael Pinsky's vision of a future flooded London does this with a simple and elegant beauty.”
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Notes to Editors
The University of East London (UEL) is a global learning community with over 28,000 students from over 120 countries world-wide. Our vision is to achieve recognition, both nationally and internationally, as a successful and inclusive regional university proud of its diversity, committed to new modes of learning which focus on students and enhance their employability, and renowned for our contribution to social, cultural and economic development, especially through our research and scholarship. We have a strong track-record in widening participation and working with industry.
