Hayward Gallery will present Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis

Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis will be coming to the Hayward Gallery in June 2023. The exhibition will explore how international contemporary artists are helping to reframe our responses to the climate crisis.

Image: Andrea Bowers, Step It Up Activist, Sand Key Reef, Key West, Florida, Part of North America's Only Remaining Coral Barrier Reef, 2009. © Andrea Bowers. Courtesy of artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery. Photo credit: Thomas Mueller.

From 21 June to 3 September 2023, the Hayward Gallery will present Dear Earth: Art and Hope in a Time of Crisis, a timely exhibition exploring how international contemporary artists are helping to reframe our responses to the climate crisis. The pioneering, group exhibition will feature works from over fifteen international artists with a focus on foregrounding feminist and diverse perspectives on our relationship with the Earth. 

Image: Richard Mosse, Oil Spill on Kichwa Territory I. Block 192, Rio Tigre, Loreto, 2023. © Richard Mosse, 2023. Courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery and carlier gebauer.

The show will also include a multitude of new commissions from artists and community groups including Hito Steyerl, Cornelia Parker, Daiara Tukano, Richard Mosse, Jenny Kendler, Grounded Ecotherapy and Ackroyd & Harvey. Dear Earth will also mark the first time artists Daiara Tukano and Aluaiy Kaumakan have shown their work in a major UK art institution. 

Image: Otobong Nkanga, Double Plot, 2018. © Otobong Nkanga. Installation view from Kröller-Müller Museum.

With featured artist Otobong Nkanga’s suggestion that “caring is a form of resistance” at its core, Dear Earth will be a hopeful, joyful and compassionate show drawing on themes of resilience, care and tending. It will be a call to action for audiences to collectively explore how care for our planet is embedded in political, spiritual and environmental actions, including through the perspectives of animals, plants, rivers, oceans and marginalised communities worldwide. 

Dear Earth hopes to inspire a renewed sense of connection with the natural world, and invite audiences to consider the unique and evolving role art has to play in today’s climate debate and activism.

Location: Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London SE1 8XX. Date: 21 June - 3 September 2023. Price: TBC.

Dear Earth will be part of the Southbank Centre’s wider summer season of work around on the climate emergency. With a focus on empathy and activism, it will encompass performance, literature, poetry and spoken word, as well as classical and contemporary music across the site. The summer programme is reflective of the Southbank Centre’s commitment to sustainability and its continued work to be a Net Zero carbon site by 2035.