Art has always been about pushing boundaries, but some creatives take it to a new level by collaborating with something we can't even see: air. These avant-garde artists and designers are flipping the script on traditional mediums, using wind, breath, and atmospheric currents to craft mind-blowing experiences that challenge our perceptions of the natural world. As climate change and air pollution continue to threaten our planet, these innovators are working with a medium, drawing attention to the urgent need for clean air and sustainable practices.

Lead Image: ©Hicham Berrada, Celeste

John Sabraw (Ohio, USA)

In the rivers of Ohio, polluted by the old coal-mining industry, artist and professor John Sabraw is collecting toxic sludge. He realised he could use this “big, orange, sludgy, sulphur-smelling pollution running through creeks killing everything” to make pigment for his paintings.

By washing the sludge with reverse osmosis water, he can pull out and dry a beautiful, powdered iron oxide (which artists have been using since the earliest cave paintings). He mixes it with acrylics or watercolours and then uses his bespoke pigments to create a series of circular paintings, exploring the fragility of our relationship with nature.

However, for John, the project's main objective is to clean up the waterways. He intercepts the pollution before it can get to the stream, performs his process and then returns the clean water. It just so happens that he ends up with vibrant paintings, which help to highlight the issue and further the conversation.

Dryden Goodwin (London, UK)

Despite some improvement in London's air quality due to reduced coal burning, pollution remains a significant issue, much like in other major cities worldwide. The London Air Quality Index often shows pollution levels exceeding UK and World Health Organisation limits, exposing residents to harmful and potentially life-threatening pollutants.

Artist Dryden Goodwin has long been dedicated to raising awareness about this issue. His year-long multi-site artwork,’ Breathe:2022’ appeared across London and sites across the UK - including over 1,300 drawings, shown as individual and sequences of posters, still and animated, printed and digital. 'Breathe:2022' culminated with the completed animation projected on Lewisham's Old Town Hall, Catford town in November/December 2022. The project was created in collaboration with Invisible Dust and featured a public artwork of 1,000 drawings. By depicting local environmental activists, the project underscores the urgency of addressing air pollution and highlights the political apathy towards clean air initiatives. Goodwin's intricate drawings, displayed in public spaces and turned into captivating animations, are visible in some of the borough's most congested areas, such as under bridges, on walls, and along major roads.

David Rikard (London, UK)

David Rickard is a New Zealand artist based in London, UK. His original studies in architecture have had a lasting impact on his art practice, embedding queries of material and spatial perception deep into his work. Through research and experimentation, his works attempt to understand how we arrived at our current perception of the physical world and how far our perception is from what we call reality.

The air that surrounds us today has been in circulation for centuries. In fact, within every breath we take, we likely have at least one molecule of the air exhaled by Caesar over two thousand years ago(1). Besides its longevity, the air is also highly transient; the air we breathe in London will spread around the northern hemisphere within two weeks and across the globe within approximately two years. This gas we inhale, deep into our bodies with every breath, has already passed through countless bodies and borders.

The work International Airspace returns to the twenty-seven signing countries of the Paris Convention1 to form a new collaborative air space, one hundred years after the original agreement. Through exchange with people from each signatory country, local air samples have been collected and combined within a single glass vessel to form a new fragile international airspace built on trust and collaboration.

Neha Rao (Jaipur, India)

Neha Rao is a sustainable textile designer who combines sustainable practice, innovation, and design.

The project ‘SOOT – A study of emotionally durable design and textile colourants’ explores the consumer's emotional connection with the product using an innovative printing method with an air pollutant. The basis for this project is “fast fashion” and the implications and impact of this fashion industry on the environment and resources.

In fast fashion trends, clothing is designed to move from the runway to the store as quickly as possible. This has resulted in astounding growth in the fast fashion industry. In this era of industrialisation and mechanisation, soot is a common waste by-product and an air pollutant. The commercial name of soot is Carbon Black. Carbon Black (methane & acetylene-based) is widely used as an inorganic pigment in the tyre industry and in cartridges for printing on paper. Alkyl Amines Private Ltd in India became my primary source of acquiring the waste by-product soot. Experiments were conducted to convert this air pollutant into a useful end product.

Transsolar & Tetsuo Kondo (Tokyo, Japan)

Clouds are important elements of our atmosphere, framing outdoor space and filtering sunlight. They are the visible part of the terrestrial water cycle, carrying water— the source of life—from the oceans to the land. Clouds find balance within stable equilibria and naturally sustain themselves, embodying and releasing solar energy. The ability to touch, feel, and walk through the clouds is drawn from many of our fantasies. Gazing out of aeroplane windows high above the earth, we often daydream of what it might be like to live in this ethereal world of fluffy vapour.

Transsolar & Tetsuo Kondo Architects created ‘Cloudscapes’ where visitors can experience a real cloud from below, within, and above floating in the centre of the Arsenale. Visitors find a path akin to the typical experience of walking through a garden. The route winds through Cloudscapes appearing and disappearing. Sometimes, people only see others across the cloud, obscuring the path. The structure has a 4.3-meter-high ramp that allows visitors to sit above the cloud. The structure leans on the existing Arsenale columns. The cloud is constantly changing, so the path experience is also dynamic.

LIVE+BREATHE (London, UK)

Over time, exposure to air pollution can contribute to health problems ranging from asthma to cardiovascular diseases, and it’s estimated that over 36,000 people in the UK die every year due to its long-term impact. However, this issue doesn’t affect everyone equally – people from ethnic minority backgrounds, such as Black or Asian, tend to be disproportionately affected, with more diverse neighbourhoods tending to be located closer to inner city areas where pollution levels are highest.

In the Summer of 2022, LIVE + BREATHE collaborated with LCC students on the Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS) to develop contributions to a community event at Southwark Park, which aimed to generate a joyful space where audiences could celebrate our streets and reclaim our air’. Working with creative agency Purpose alongside musician and activist Love Ssega, they were allowed to pitch proposed ways of channelling creativity into action around environmental issues. Students who pitched successfully were then supported in bringing their ideas to life and allowed to showcase their work to audiences at the final community event.

Tacita Dean (London, UK)

Tacita Dean is an artist. Tacita Dean's ‘Foreign Policy’, a chalk‑on‑blackboard piece, is part of a series of cloud representations that began in 2014 when the artist was struck by the sight of a cloudiness resembling a “mushroom cloud” in the Los Angeles sky.

The English artist had initially been made ‘Foreign Policy’ for the office of the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office during the Brexit campaign. The challenge of capturing clouds' ever-changing shape echoes this moment's profound political instability. Tacita Dean, whose work frequently deals with the landscape, most often captures it through her drawings or films. These elements are in transition: trees in bloom, glaciers under threat… the precariousness of the elements evokes that of our existences and societies.

Hicham Berrada (Paris + Roubaix, France)

Hicham Berrada’s artistic approach centers on the experimental use of chemical substances as materials. In his installations, performances and film-based works he relies on these chemicals to provoke reactions, which often evoke associations of microscopic, ephemeral forms of natural organisms and landscapes. The artist not only places the focus on the poetry of spontaneously occurring processes with his works, but also critically explores the late-modernist view of a nature that can be dominated by science and technology.

At the start of the video entitled Celeste (2014) the viewer sees a shot of a lush and thriving forest through the open window of a country house. However, shortly afterwards traces of cobalt-blue smoke that come from an unknown source encroach on the idyllic looking scene. Over the course of time they develop into a cloud of apocalyptic proportions, which can be seen to merge with its surroundings, and threatens to take up the entire screen. But is this cloud a poisonous substance that will ultimately lead to the forest’s destruction? Does the smoke cloud perhaps only visualize the pollution that is present in our air anyway? Or is it perhaps an as yet unknown defense mechanism on the part of nature? Given this and similar associations, the blue cloud in the work Celeste becomes a complex visualization of the dangerous monopolization and destruction sufferedby the natural environment.