In April last year we reported on a new arts commission, called My Carbon Family, which was part of Coventry’s City of Culture programme. The Council allocated a budget of £75,000 for five artworks relating to climate change based on an idea of Coventry’s Roger Harrabin.
We later heard that the project had been abandoned, possibly because the site for the sculptures was no longer available. We can find no explanation of this on the Council’s website or in the news.
However, the project didn’t go away, the sculptures were completed and are now on display at the Eden Project, without any mention of Coventry’s input.
Renamed “Our Carbon Creatures” the sculptures are now being displayed in a landmark exhibition at the Eden Project in Cornwall.
The exhibition is part of the legacy of Roger Harrabin’s career as the BBC’s Energy and Environment Analyst. On this retirement Roger has produced a documentary film The Art of Cutting Carbon which celebrates new ways of cutting carbon dioxide usage. The sculptures feature in the film which is available on the BBC’s I player.
The sculptures highlight the huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions caused by the manufacture of everyday materials – concrete, steel, plastic, paper/card and aluminium.
Bringing the exhibition together has been a labour of love lasting more than a decade for Roger Harrabin and creative director Simon Bingle after they were inspired by the ground-breaking work of Julian Allwood, Professor of Engineering and the Environment at Cambridge University.
Simon and three fellow artists, Kedisha Coakley, Gina Czarnecki, and John Jostins made sculptures from these materials for The Art of Cutting Carbon.
The Sculptures
Mbulu Ngulu by Kedisha Coakley made out steel. Global steel production creates 3 billion tonnes of CO2 every year.
Concrete Truths by Simon Bingle. Global concrete production creates 2.5 billion tonnes of CO2 every year.
Child Born of Oil by Gina Czarnecki made out plastic. Global plastic production creates 1.8 billion tonnes of CO2 every year.
Call me All by John Jostins made out aluminium. Global Aluminium production creates 0.6 billion tonnes of CO2 every year.
Cardboard Catastophe by Simon Bingle. The global production of paper and cardboard creates 0.9 billion tonnes of CO2 every year.
The Art of Cutting Carbon
The documentary highlights a number of revolutionary technologies which can reduce the production of CO2 associated with these industries.
Roger visits a zero-carbon steel works in Sweden which emits only water vapour, and experiences ‘edible’ plastic bottles manufactured in the Netherlands. There is a magical gadget that sucks the ink off printer paper so each sheet can be used 10 times over.
Concrete makers are experimenting with new materials and techniques that would allow the industry to generate less CO2. In Germany there is a new machine that takes in aluminium chips, then warms them and compresses them though a sort of giant toothpaste nozzle, to produce a tube of re-formed aluminium – at a fraction of the emissions of normal recycling.
You can watch Roger’s documentary here.
Roger Harrabin (67) was brought up and started his career in Coventry and will be giving this year’s Lord Mayor’s Peace lecture on 10th November.