Eco-Art. Pori Art Museum 2011. 221 pages. www.poriartmuseum.fi

This beautifully illustrated book (English, Finnish) preserves the memory of the Eco-Art exhibition, which was held from February to March 2011 to mark the 30th anniversary of the Pori Art Museum, Finland. The curator Pia Hovi-Assad was assisted by the invited curators John K. Grande and Peter Selz who gathered photographic prints, drawings, videos, wall paintings and installations for the occasion: “As the landscape and environment change on our planet for a number of reasons,” John K. Grande stated, “artists’ engagement with these issues increasingly moves from a theoretical and conceptual bias (something early land art often emphasized) to direct action and process oriented art or alternatively an art that involved landscape integration as part of its vernacular it becomes so important— this discourse on art and ecology.” Besides some legendary American Land Art pioneers the exhibition brought together contemporary artists hailing from the U.S.A, Canada, Japan and Europe, notably: Brandon Ballengée, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chris Drury, Andy Goldsworthy, Nils-Udo, Bob Verschueren, and Alan Sonfist. Among the many other points of view on the art/nature relation proposed by the authors, let us highlight Peter Selz’s text which recounts the career of several artists (Agnes Denes, Newton and Helen Mayer-Harrison, Ciel Bergman, etc.) who contrary to the often “strongarmed” interventions of the first land artists, “realize that works of art celebrating the earth could be made directly on the land without disrupting the ecology.” In addition to the two curators and the museum director, Esko Nummelin, the publication includes essays by Hiriko Shimizu from Osaka City University, and Yrjö Haila who, among other places, carried out research at the University of Helsinki and at the Sakakunta Environmental Research Centre, Pori (University of Turku).