Thinking with the Harrisons

"As pioneers of environmental art, Newton and Helen Harrison were fifty years ahead of their time. Their proposal was for nothing less than a new paradigm for research, at once earth-centred, open-ended, responsive and communal, uniting science and art around urgent questions of planetary ecology. In this book, Anne Douglas and Chris Fremantle offer the first full-length appraisal of the Harrisons’ work. In a world reeling from the destructive impacts of unfettered technoscience, its relevance has never been greater." - Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen

“A new aesthetic, one grounded in ecology, is needed to address the daunting challenges of our time. Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison made art for over fifty years focused on the connection of living organisms with each other and their environments. The Harrisons’ oeuvre and this fine book help to recenter the arts in our global ecological crises.” - Frederick Steiner, University of Pennsylvania, Stuart Weitzman School of Design

“Through a deeply considered re-examination of the work of the Harrisons, Douglas and Fremantle remind us that many of the answers to address the crisis of climate change already exist. This book offers an enlightened framework to see a different future for the arts within the ecological solutions needed for our world today.” - Cameron Cartiere, Emily Carr University of Art + Design

The passage of time has only confirmed the prescience and centrality of the Harrison’s work for understanding our current planetary crisis, and the crucial role that art can play in addressing it. This extensive, historically and theoretically informed analysis of their work is long overdue and a real joy to read. It’s well past time for the broader art world to fully acknowledge the importance of the Harrisons’ work, and this book is an essential starting point for that process. - Grant Kester, University of California San Diego

All this said, I believe this is an immensely valuable book that needs to be studied and digested in the widest possible educational context, not simply by those involved in teaching the arts and by students on degree and masters level art and design courses. Whether or not that will happen is obviously an open question. However, if by ill-chance this book does not find its rightful place on college and university reading lists, which are still all-too-often compiled by academics sheltering behind the narrow protectionism inherent in disciplinary specialism, I can only fervently hope that it becomes an ‘underground classic’. One of those books that lively and imaginative individuals and groups will delight in sharing, discussing and acting upon.- Iain Biggs, October 2024, https://www.iainbiggs.co.uk/2024/10/thinking-with-the-harrisons-re-imagining-the-arts-in-the-global-environmental-crisis-leuven-university-press-october-9th-2024-a-review/