The specially commissioned works for the Natural History Museum will include, drawings, aluminium and porcelain sculptures, a pirogue, a vast diptych video projection involving poetry, photographs and a public engagement artwork, which the artists hope will restore our focus on the world around us, both its beauty and its imperilled state. Drawing also on the Museum’s collections and scientific expertise, the exhibition coincides with the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya and National Poetry Day.

The diptych video projection Amazonia draws the viewer in through mesmerising imagery and sounds recorded during the expedition through the Peruvian rainforest.  Its narrative composed by award-winning ecopoet Mario Petrucci, starts with the voice of Gaia:

My centre is everywhere
Everything – huge and hung together

The poem unfolds through a dialogue between a man and a woman, a story that shapes and prompts us to reflect on the plight of nature and takes the viewer on a journey.

At the heart of the exhibition, also conceived as a journey, the visitors are invited to take home a piece of Amazonia, through a participative artwork entitled Perpetual Amazonia.  In exchange for taking a poster artwork, you are invited to contribute to the rainforest’s conservation and the scientific research that takes place there.

Lucy + Jorge Orta have collaborated since 1991. Their solo exhibitions have included: Hangar Biccoca Milano; Fondazione Bevilaqua La Masa Venezia; Barbican Art Gallery London; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam; ICA London; Modern Art Museum Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney; as well as the Venice, Havana and Johannesburg Biennials.  In 2007, the artists received the Green Leaf Award for artistic excellence with an environmental message, presented by the United Nations Environment Programme in partnership with the Natural World Museum at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway.

Mario Petrucci is a poet, ecologist and broadcaster, highly regarded in the UK and overseas for his potent and innovative work (in film and music as well as poetry) on the environmental concerns of our age.  His book-length poem on Chernobyl, Heavy Water, won the coveted Arvon Daily Telegraph Prize and was the subject of an award-winning film by Seventh Art.  www.mariopetrucci.com

Amazonia is the latest in the Museum’s contemporary art programme, which invites artists to use our science, research and history to stimulate new perspectives. Past exhibitions have explored climate change, biodiversity loss, human and animal emotional expressions, and the history of collections.  Amazonia is part of the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity, raising awareness of the importance of Earth’s biological diversity.  Curated by Bergit Arends.

Visitor information:
Natural History Museum – Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD
Dates and times: 6 October 2010 – 12 December 2010, 10.00–17.50 (last admission 17.30)
Admission: Free
Visitor enquiries: 020 7942 5000 Monday–Friday, 020 7942 5011 Saturday–Sunday
Website: www.nhm.ac.uk

Notes for editors
Winner of Visit London’s 2009 Best London for Free Experience Award, the Natural History Museum is also a world-leading science research centre. Through its collections and scientific expertise, the Museum is helping to conserve the extraordinary richness and diversity of the natural world with groundbreaking projects in more than 68 countries. For further information please contact the Natural History Museum press office:

Tel: 020 7942 5654
Email: press@nhm.ac.uk

To discuss the poetry aspects of the project:
mmpetrucci@hotmail.com

That ocean divides. Yet the yeasts on my toes

have stowed away on yours – at the heel

of a day crammed with doings, shoe-snug,

they waft up to you our distinctive tang.

There’s a suspicion in the breath I catch

single-handed, just after brushing my teeth,

of that must my tongue first muscled in on

when our kissing strayed across the Channel

and a hybrid gas hibernates in my warp

of sheets, in my nightclothes – a smell that’s

somewhere between us, nuzzling to my body

warmth, or nosing the weft of denim that

spanned four shoulders of our lumbering

golem through hugger-mugger November nights.

Those secret hordes make us a common host:

cling, spawn, multiply in and under these skins –

our bodies soft continents.

From: Flowers of Sulphur (Enitharmon Press, 2007)
by Mario Petrucci

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Critique

In Touch reads as a modern rhetoric on the ancient idea of eros. The title suggests that although a lover can be aware of their own feelings, there is an outside force which cannot be controlled; a force creates uncertainty and separatism.

From the opening line of That ocean divides the reader is immediately flung into the paranoid and bitter recesses of passionate love;

That ocean divides. Yet the yeasts on my toes

Have stowed away on yours – at the heel

of a day crammed with doings, shoe snug

They waft up to you our distinctive tang.

Their union is looked upon with familiarity (our and shoe snug) yet repulsion (distinctive tang) hope (Yet the yeast…) and insecurity (that, on yours, at the heel). Like the satire of Petronius, Petrucci uses a private subject to catapult us into the situation with a tinge of recoil and disgust which echo the emotions of the speaker.

The conflicting emotions of eros are clear, with guilt linked to act of intercourse with the warp of sheets. The use of four shoulders is reminiscent of the derogatory term a beast with two backs, and yet he looks fondly upon nuzzling to my body warmth and their past lumbering golem. The word golem increases the sense of displacement and artificiality.

The speaker’s position in the relationship is uncertain; there’s a suspicion in the breath I catch. Initially in control (that must my tongue first muscled in on) the speaker feels that he is now trapped in a love that is crammed like a hybrid gas, dominated by his lover and his feelings;

Those secret hordes make us a common host:

Cling, spawn, multiply in and under these skins –

The speaker’s journey is clearly depicted; the poem begins with a statement of separateness (That ocean divides, I catch single handed), but as the poem flows past remembrances of hugger mugger November nights, the speaker comes to the realisation that love still exists somewhere between us in our bodies soft continents.

As the tenses change from past to present to future, the simple two line stanzas reflect the movement of the relationship and hope for its future, whilst the broken and disjointed sentence structure further depict the laws governing the common host of erotic love.

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*Reproduced with kind permission from Mario Petrucci