In no particular order: 2008 in review

What are the best and most inspiring artworks that you've seen - or read or heard - this year?

Twenty-two pieces from 2008 that we and our colleagues felt deserve another mention as representing something unique. From public art to poetry, theatre to video, they are works from all over the world that in some way confront the universal idea of ecology. Optimistic, pessimistic, lyrical or bold, what this list underlines is that there is now a gathering body of work which encounters the realities of the modern world.

Take a look. And let us what you think were the key works of 2008 by making a comment below. 

The New York City Waterfalls by Olafur Eliasson, 26 June - ­ 13 October 2008, the Public Art Fund in conjunction with the City of New York

"Invigorating how people understand the ecology of the river in New York City, the awesome NYC Waterfalls were conceived by Danish Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and created by a team of nearly 200 people. The four colossal man-made waterfalls (90 - 120ft) were installed at sites where the Hudson and East River converge, powered by green energy and capable of churning over two million gallons of water per hour. The website of the project is an excellent resource detailing fascinating stuff on all aspects of this exceptional project, including videos of the work, the artist and teaching materials."
Emma Ridgway, RSA Arts & Ecology

Agnes Denes Retrospective, Art for the Third Millenium, 26 September - 7 December 2008, Ludwig Museum, Budapest

"Denes was one of the early pioneers in environmental art – important works re-shown in this show were Wheatfield: a Confrontation which involved planting a temporary Wheatfield in Manhattan in 1982 and her illustrations for Tree Mountain - A Living Time Capsule:11,000 Trees, 11,000 people, 400 years which involved planting 11,000 trees in Finland."
Gemma Lloyd, RSA Arts & Ecology

Lock by Catherine Yass, 16 January - 23 February 2008, Alison Jaques Gallery, London

"High Wire, her recent Artangel commission, may have garnered more attention, but it was in her exhibition at the Alison Jacques Gallery that Catherine Yass tackled current environmental and political issues most directly. Her film installation Lock was a response to the Three Gorges Dam in China's Yangtze River. Whilst Jia Zhangke's Still Life - released at the same time - documented the turmoil and destruction of riverbank cities soon to be flooded by rising water levels, Lock confined itself to a journey through the dam's ship canal. Projected as two large, wall-filling images, Lock remained open and suggestive, but it also confined arguments about the dam's impact to its architectural form, highlighting loss of perspective and sense of scale amongst its vast walls and gates."
David Berridge More Milk Yvette

I'm Sucking on a Tailpipe in Seoul by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Stop.Watch. 2008

"Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industry's work for Stop.Watch. [the series of short internet films commissioned by RSA Arts and Ecology and Animate Projects] is fantastic and I think it should be blasted round everywhere. It's perplexing at first, but what’s really good about that piece of work [which involves words from an imagined conversation in a sushi restaurant flashing on to a screen] is how well it works in different places. I saw it projected on to a wall of a bank in Delhi." View here.
Michaela Crimmin, RSA Arts & Ecology

Stifter's Dinge by Heiner Goebbels, 15 - 27 April 2008, P3, Marylebone Rd, London/Artangel, London

"I know you’re not asking us to talk about work we're involved with, but  I would bring to your attention a music theatre piece buy a German composer called Heiner Goebbels, called Stifter's Dinge, which means "Stifter's" things. Stifter was an early 19th century romantic poet. Artangel brought the piece to the UK and presented it ina  kind of underground concrete cavern. It was a concert piece with no performance [described as "part music box, part landscape painting"] and it really explored the relationship between humankind and the natural environment, from the renaissance, through to the romantic approach to landscapes and 20th century urbanism to what happens after, potentially. It didn't bang you over the head, it was a very elegaic piece."
James Lingwood, Artangel

Foreshore by Robert Kusmirowski, 14 June - 14 September 2008 Folkestone Triennial

"Robert installed a recreation of a fish stall in the harbour of Folkestone. Due to its position the tide dictated when it was and wasn’t visible.  The reason I made this connection is that many coastal parts of Great Britain have fallen into decline in terms of social pleasure but also as working areas, which bring in an economy, livelihood and source of food to the local community. There is a fishing town near to where I grew up – Great Yarmouth - that was thriving in the 1900s for Herring trade but the fish stocks are now depleted. I am also thinking of how food travels now, I heard that Whitby scampi goes all the way to a production line in China to be prepared and the comes right back again to our country…"
Gemma Lloyd, RSA Arts & Ecology

Museo Aero Solar by Tomas Saraceno, various locations

"Tomas Sarceno has been at many locations throughout the year in an ongoing project to construct a flying solar balloon. Children contribute waste plastic and their labor in each place to help with the construction. Soon it will be large enough to lift him into the sky. Breathtakingly beautiful, simple, and subversive."
Matthew Lippincott, Where the Summer Calm of Charity Perpetually Reigns

Barakhambha in 2008 by Navjot Altaf, 48oC Public.Art.Ecology, 12 - 21 December 2008, Delhi

"We tend to concentrate on the artists, but it's important to first to mention people like Pooja Sood, the artistic director and curator of this project. There are some people with amazing tenacity that just make things happen and Pooja Sood is one of them. She genuinely wants to engage with people. This was a place that had just been affected by terrorism. You couldn't move for metal detectors. But it still went on. This video piece by Navjot Altav was one of the best pieces there. In a really busy street Altav created these three big video screens. On two of the screens, two people are talking about the metro scheme they were building in Delhi, and about the changing environment. You might get a rickshaw driver taking about how it's going to ruin his livelihood next to an economist who thinks this is going to work. Or someone from an environmental charity next to an anthropologist. The scale of it was just right, so people were drawn to the screen, fixated by it. And then, every now and then, you notice yourself on the third screen. There was a camera there, filing the people who were watching. So you became implicated too. It was a very local work but one you could apply anywhere in the world."
Michaela Crimmin, RSA Arts & Ecology

Body Water Condensation, by Tue Greenfort, 15-19 October, Frieze Project, Frieze 2008

"Apart from being an oasis of calm in the white haze of Frieze, Greenfort's air conditioned darkened room reversed the polarity of the accepted world in such a simple way. Instead of going to an art fair and drinking bottled water, his room produced bottled water by sucking the water from your body, distilling it and bottling it, reminding you that we have the power to turn things around, turn bad things to good."
William Shaw, RSA Arts & Ecology

SMOKE by Implicasphere: an itinerary of meandering thought.8 October-15 December 2008, Pump House Gallery, Wandsworth

"SMOKE was a modest exhibition project and publication weaving together curious objects related to smoke. Implicasphere is a project by Cathy Haynes and Sally O'Reilly that draws together curious information around a single subject; previous works have investigated mice, string, onions and beards. SMOKE include items as a smoking hat, smoked glass and a 17th Century miniature print of a servant throwing water over a pipe-smoking Sir Water Raleigh assuming him to be on fire. It was the witty intelligence of the project made me think deeply about the uses and abuses of smoke in the UK through time; from the metaphorical (steam train entering a tunnel) to the literal (children with vitamin D deficiency in 1950s London) and recognise that smoke is tangible pollutant, an industrial environmental problem that was effectively counted by the Britain’s Clear Air Act and the environmental problems we currently face are both more complex and less visibly obvious so need extraordinary new solutions and a new way of thinking about ecology."
Emma Ridgway, RSA Arts & Ecology

Disco Mecanique by David Batchelor, 14 June - 14 September 2008 Folkestone Triennial

"Although David is primarily concerned with colour, for his installation at Folkestone he showed a work called Disco Mecanique made entirely of cheap plastic sunglasses. He has developed a whole body of work that uses cheap disposable materials that for me also invites considerations into ecology around production, workforce, synthetic materials."
Gemma Lloyd, RSA Arts & Ecology

Martha Wainwright "It is Hard", 28 October 2008, The Roundhouse, London

"'It is Hard" is the song Martha wrote when she was in the Arctic [with the Cape Farewell Project. What we did in the Arctic was feed the musicians with an amazing amount of science and social responsibility and everything that’s climate and everyone went woah! And Martha said, 'It's hard, you know. How do we adapt our lives? How do we get engaged?' And the whole song is about how it is a really hard ghing to do. When she did her gig at the Roundhouse she performed it live with Shlomo, the beatbox guy, and brought the roof down. It has really great lyrics - really complex - and the audience got it. Suddenly you had this whole other vehicle for carrying a message."
David Buckland Cape Farewell Project

The Yamuna Blues, Haubitz + Zoche, 48 Degrees Celcius Public.Art.Ecology, 12 - 21 December 2008, Delhi

"In this public space in the middle of Delhi Haubitz and Zoche projected this image from a tower which created a pool of light, like a pond, but which was a film of the river that runs through Delhi - the Yamuna - in all its toxicity, but also its seductive beauty. You could only see it in the dark. It was extraordinarily magical. It reminded you that the river is very year, and that rivers are the lifeblood of cities."
Michaela Crimmin, RSA Arts & Ecology

Vatnasafn/Library of Water by Roni Horn, Artangel, permanent installation, Stykkishólmur, Iceland

"It's an installation in a converted library building in a small town on the south west of Iceland. The piece is 24 floor-to-ceiling glass colums each of which contain water from the 24 glaciers or glacial tongues around Iceland. All of these are receding, some at a very rapid rate. Again, the piece is not polemical, it's not necessarily even about climate change, but these columns just stand there, looking very much the same, except for the sediment at the bottom of each one, that is different. At a time when issues are urgent it's good to have pieces that have a longterm resonance, that are perhaps a bit subtle about the way they approach these issues."
James Lingwood, Artangel

Utopian Architectures around '68, MOMUK, Vienna

"As part of Mind Expanders at MUMOK, Vienna Utopian Architectures around `68 presented works by many Austrian based artists who formed experimental groups to propose alternative ways of living. In particular the work of Hans Hollein and Haus-Rucker-Co were probably the most interesting for me and resonate with work of artists like Tomas Saraceno."  
Gemma Lloyd, RSA Arts & Ecology

Make it snow! make it snow! make it snow! by Manu Luksch, Stop.Watch. 2008

"This is a video that is incredibly poetic at the same time as showing the insanity of how we live. It's based around using snow machines to make snow for a ski slope. Manu Luksch’s voice is incredibly good.  In a warming world, we are making snow so people can ski. The more I look at it the more I see. And it also has a very good aesthetic."
Michaela Crimmin, RSA Arts & Ecology

Beyond Pastoral (Shroud of Turin), by Bruce High Quality Foundation, Greenwashing, Turin

"Bruce High Quality Foundation showed documentation of a work previously made in New York in 2007 at Greenwashing in Turin at the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo – BP changed its name to Beyond Petroleum in 2000 and launched a new logo made up of sunflowers, BHQF arranged lemons and limes in the shape of this logo, they wired each piece of fruit up with electrodes to produce electricity which were to power the lights in a mock up of a BP petrol station but ironically the installation turned into a health hazard and instead of being an alternative energy source. This work was perhaps most in line with the meaning of the show’s title Greenwashing."
Gemma Lloyd, RSA Arts & Ecology

The volume of one tonne of CO2 by Sunand Prasad, 2 October 2008, Cape Farwell Disko Bay expedition, Greenland

"Trying to put four atmospheric balloons up in the arctic to form a cube is not easy. You have to ship these big balloons there, you're working in -15 degrees, and you have to ship the helium there, plus there are these kabatic winds. But the project was really beautiful. It goes back to a quote from Amy Balkin when she was with us last year.She said, 'Let's make the atmosphere into a world heritage site.' It's such a hard thing to make people visualise the thing they breathe in all the time - the thing we're messing up, this complex mix of gasses that gives us life. I think Sunand's piece of work did that." [Sunand Prasad's place on Cape Farwell 2008 was funded by RSA Arts & Ecology]
David Buckland, Cape Farewell Project

Severed by Melanie Challenger, Stop.Watch. 2008

"This is a poem commissioned for the launch of Stop.Watch. [Challenger's poem was inspired by the film Severed, The Deracinator and the Isle by Simon Woolham.] It’s the first poem commissioned by the RSA as far as we know, and I really like the idea that it quotes Milton, going back as we go forward. It’s art that is response to another artwork. It raises questions about poetry, how far it does reach and how you get it out into that sphere." Read the poem here.
Michaela Crimmin, RSA Arts & Ecology

The Man Who Planted Trees by Puppet State Theatre, currently touring and at Unicorn Theatre, London April 14-26

"Based on the book by John Giono, this play for everyone aged 7+ offers an extraordinary sensory pathway into a contemplation of how humanity can aspire to  a selfless relationship with the natural world. Simple yet brilliant puppetry that inspires shameless humour accompanies us on our journey through the the fields and forests of Provence, the ravages and tragedies of war and a rejuvenated eco-system. But really its about a man who plants trees – 100 in the morning and 100 in the afternoon.. ." More information about The Man Who Planted Trees here. 
Angela McSherry, TippingPoint: Art & Climate Change

Crash!! by Krishnaraj Chonat 48oC Public.Art.Ecology, 12 - 21 December 2008, Delhi

"A crane suspending a hung tree on this really busy road where they're building a metro station, above this old crumbling house... This extraordinary piece was just the most brilliant scale and was lit fantastically. It was just so curious... and spectacular. It was like the end of everything old and beautiful in the middle of everything that's synthetic and ugly."
Michaela Crimmin, RSA Arts & Ecology

I am so sorry. Goodbye. (Escape Vehicle number 4) by Heather and Ivan Morison, 2 May - 28 September 2008, Tatton Park Biennial

"The Morison's work really pushes your imagination. At first you think you've come across some cosy yurt-ish new age traveller structure, but the more you dwell on it the less cosy it becomes. It's all about a fantasy of post-apocalyptic survivalism, with all the misanthropy and horror that implies."
William Shaw, RSA Arts & Ecology

What was the best work you saw this year? Let us know below.

Photographs: Tree Mountain - Proposal for a Forest - 1,5 x 1,5 miles - 11 000 Trees, 1983 and Tree Mountain: A Living Tome Capsule - 11 000 Trees - 11 000 People - 400 Years, Ylöjarvi, Finland, 1992-1996; Foreshore by Robert Kusmirowski by Thierry Bal; Disco Mecanique by David Batchelor by Thierry Bal; Utopian Architectures around '68 - Haus-Rucker-Co, Laurids Ortner, Günter Zamp Kelp, Klaus Pinter, Mind Expander II, 1969, Polyester, paint, plexiglass, aluminium, metal parts chrome-plated, wiring, Foto: MUMOK, Lisa Rastl, © Haus-Rucker-Co, Laurids Ortner, Günter Zamp Kelp, Klaus Pinter; Beyond Pastoral by Bruce High Quality Foundation, photo by Oto Gillen