Earth Day 2022

Front Room Gallery is proud to present Save Your Earth | You Can’t Get Off, featuring Thomas Broadbent, Sasha Bezzubov, Karen Marston, Miho Suzuki, Eileen Sackman. In Save Your Earth | You Can’t Get Off, the artists reflect on issues regarding habitat loss/human encroachment and its impact on endangered species throughout the globe. 

Earth Day was first celebrated on April 22, 1970 to increase global awareness of growing environmental problems. Earth Day 1970 led to the passage of landmark environmental laws in the United States, including the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Karen Marston paints natural and not so natural disasters, triggered by the near simultaneous explosions of the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and the volcano in Iceland. The scope of this continuing exploration broadened to include more volcanos, raging forest fires, hurricanes and tornadoes. Marston’s latest subject is also a climate change induced crisis unfolding in our oceans, the destruction of coral reefs. Like the melting of the arctic, this waterbound environment is rapidly being altered by warming temperatures. The death of these complex organisms has cascading effects on their surrounding ecosystems and profoundly symbolizes our interdependence on nature and the terrifying dangers currently facing all life on earth.

Sasha Bezzubov, known for his previous work addressing such subjects as global warming and natural disasters has work from two different series in this exhibtion: Wildfire, and Things Fall Apart. Things Fall Apart is a series of photographs of destruction caused by natural disasters in India, the US, Indonesia and Thailand. Using the genre of landscape photography, a tradition born with and employed to celebrate industrial expansion, these photographs evidence the fragility of the man-made as it is transformed into dreamscapes of apocalyptic proportions. In the Wildfire series Bezzubov focuses on the devastation wrought by wildfires on the American west, with dramatic large-scale landscapes containing charred, burned-out forests, houses and neighborhoods. These heart wrenching beautiful landscapes draw us in and confront us with the uncomfortable notion that we might be somehow to blame.

Miho Suzuki’s photographs of wildlife, species such as snow monkeys and endangered tigers, humanize and personalize them. In this show Suzuki’s tigers in the snow are as playful as tabby cats, and their graphic orange, white and black stripes contrast starkly against the snowy background. Today, the tiger is listed on the IUCN Red List as endangered, with just under 3,200 wild tigers remaining in 13 countries in Asia. Global warming and climate change affect multiple sectors of tigers’ lives and impact their habitats and ecosystems. Unfortunately, only 7% of original tiger habitats remain as today. According to WWF, there are around 5,000 backyard tigers, or captive tigers, in the United States, meaning there are more tigers living in people’s yards, tourist attractions, game safari, or breeding facilities than in the wild. 2022 is The Year of The Tiger, hopefully we can help to change their plight.

Thomas Broadbent often selects endangered wildlife as the key figures in his compositions, often putting them in domestic settings, with human objects and furniture such as Eames Lounge Chairs. Broadbent studies the anatomy of the animals in a very concentrated and focused manner, creating a hyper-realist portrayal, with intense detail of fur, feathers and skin. The native habitat of the animals depicted has been altered to consist of cast off and reclaimed elements of human domestically. Foraging through their new environment, the animals gather together, collecting and searching for resources they can use. Broadbent personifies the creatures, presenting the question as to whether the animals are left with the remains of trappings of man or if they have altered their environment themselves.