by Dafydda ap Gruffydd
It has become increasingly apparent to me,indeed, unavoidable,that my practice could no longer remain merely responsive to landscape. To walk, to traverse, to efface one’s own trace is no longer sufficient in an epoch defined by ecological precarity and moral inertia. The time demanded not only motion, but position. And so, after a period of profound contemplation (much of it ambulatory), I have chosen to pivot my practice toward what I term Climate Art.
This was not a decision taken lightly. Nor was it inevitable, only necessary, for an artist whose work has always existed in a state of ethical alignment with the land. My earlier walking works, often misunderstood as exercises in endurance or minimalism, were in fact proto-ecological interventions: durational acts of refusal, rejecting extraction, spectacle, and permanence. That others failed to recognise this is not surprising; recognition often lags behind responsibility.
Climate Art, as I understand and practise it, is not illustrative. It does not depict catastrophe, nor does it indulge in the emotive excesses of melting icebergs or anthropomorphised polar fauna. Such gestures, while well-meaning, remain complicit in the visual economies of consumption. My work operates instead at the level of ontological recalibration. It asks not “What is happening to the planet?” but rather, “Why do you still imagine yourself as separate from it?”
My most recent project, Ambulatory Carbon Negation (Preliminary Phase), consisted of walking extremely slowly along a disused coastal footpath while thinking intensely about emissions. Each step was undertaken with acute metabolic awareness. I hardly documented the walk. Documentation, after all, has a carbon footprint. The work exists firstly as a redistribution of atmospheric conscience, only secondly as ephemera and physical remembrances.
Some have asked whether walking can truly constitute Climate Art. This question betrays a lingering anthropocentric bias. Walking, when undertaken with sufficient intentionality, slowness, and conceptual density,becomes a form of planetary listening. The foot, correctly deployed, is an instrument of ethical attunement. I have always known this. I am gratified that the climate crisis has finally forced others to catch up with my intuition.
It is important to clarify that my pivot does not represent a rupture with my earlier work, but its logical maturation. My long-standing commitment to erasure, to leaving no trace, now reveals itself as a prescient refusal of carbon inscription. Where others are scrambling to retrofit sustainability into fundamentally extractive practices, I have merely articulated what was already embedded in mine.
I am cautious about the current proliferation of climate-themed art. Much of it mistakes urgency for depth, volume for impact. Climate Art is not about noise; it is about correctness. It is about aligning one’s practice so precisely with ecological ethics that it becomes, in effect, unimpeachable. This requires restraint, seriousness, and a willingness to be misunderstood by those who still confuse accessibility with virtue.
In the coming year, I will be developing a suite of works that further explore non-invasive presence, atmospheric humility, and the aesthetics of refusal. These may include standing still in weather systems, walking in places already damaged but refusing to acknowledge the damage, and thinking about glaciers indoors to avoid unnecessary travel.
I do not claim that my work will save the planet. That would be vulgar. What it will do, quietly, rigorously, and without compromise, is model a way of being an artist that is no longer ethically optional. If that feels uncomfortable, it should. Discomfort is, after all, one of the few renewable resources we have left. Collectors may sponsor a walk, they may receive the odd photo, maybe a stick from the journey, or a well-chosen pebble. Nothing more.
