"British Art and the Environment: Changes, Challenges, and Responses since the Industrial Revolution": edited by Charlotte Gould and Sophie Mesplède

In November 2021, delegates for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) gathered in Glasgow, Scotland. Among the conference’s primary goals was reaching a unilateral, global agreement to secure net zero emissions by 2030 and to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius. Phasing out coal and investing heavily in renewable energy were among the pivotal topics under consideration. As Glasgow became the epicentre of global climate change conversations, it brought into focus Britain’s own climate failures and responsibilities. Industrialisation is seen as the catalyst for the consequences we are now trying to mitigate. Charlotte Gould and Sophie Mesplède’s timely edited collection, British Art and the Environment, traces an anthropocentric and “Anglocenic time frame” through British art history from the Industrial Revolution to the present day [4]. Gould and Mesplède’s collection, which includes a comprehensive introduction and thirteen chapters that are materially, geographically, and temporally diverse, offers readers a newfound, ecologically conscious understanding of Britain’s industrialisation. From nineteenth-century industrial developments to twenty-first-century renewable energy to the urban cityscape and the rural landscape, across visual materials and artistic traditions, this volume introduces us to alternate and vital ways of visualising and contextualising British art in our global environment.