Art For Your Oceans
7th of May, 2025 – 15th May, 2025
Sotheby’s
34 – 35 New Bond Street
London
W1A 2AA
WWF and Artwise curators in association with Sotheby’s are excited to announce Art For Your Oceans, a selling exhibition of specially commissioned works by 16 leading international artists, devised to raise funds and awareness for pioneering ocean conservation initiatives by WWF in the UK and further afield. The exhibition will go on view in Sotheby’s New Bond Street galleries from 7-15th May 2025 (free and open to all). All artworks will be available to purchase online from 1 May at wwf.
The Art For Your Ocean artists are: Max Boyla, Andrew Cranston, Laura Footes, Laura Ford, Anya Gallaccio, Antony Gormley, Nick Goss, Mona Hatoum, Lubaina Himid, Katie Kaur, Harland Miller, Beatriz Morales, Daisy Parris, Emma Stibbon, Emma Talbot and Caragh Thuring. The exhibition will also include Stella McCartney garments crafted using Kelsun, a compostable and renewable seaweed-based yarn.
Jesmonite, nylon wadding velvet, acrylic paint, seaweed ink, glazed ceramic eyes
270 cm (l) x 63cm (d)x 123 cm (h)
Copyright the Artist
Art For Your Oceans will be the first time an exhibition has been created using OCEAN INK®, the world’s first sustainable and fully biodegradable water-based ink, produced by OCEANIUM in Scotland from sustainably farmed seaweed. This globally important project will shine a light on the potential of seaweed as an invaluable tool in the fight against climate change and as a new artistic medium in the hands of our critically acclaimed AFYO artists.
Our oceans are vital for the future of our planet, providing us with at least 50% of Earth’s oxygen, absorbing around 30% of carbon dioxide produced by human activity and support the livelihoods of an estimated three billion people globally. Art For Your Oceans will support WWF’s mission to give oceans a healthier future by focusing on specific projects to reverse ocean decline.
Mollie Gupta, Seaweed Solutions Project Manager, WWF UK, “Our oceans are not only the home to some of the world’s most amazing wildlife, but also are vital for human livelihoods and fighting climate change. At WWF we are really excited about the potential that regenerative ocean farming could offer in supporting the UK to rise to the challenge of meeting our food and wellbeing needs whilst also helping to restore nature. The artworks created for Art for Your Oceans will shine a light on the amazing leadership and work being done in regenerative seaweed farming, and the funds raised will help considerably in our fight to bring our world back to life.”
Seaweed farming provides an opportunity to revolutionise how we think about ocean health, climate mitigation and coastal livelihoods. Seaweed can help tackle what WWF calls the ‘triple challenge’ of keeping global temperature rise to below 1.5C, restoring nature, and meeting the wellbeing needs of a global human population.
Seaweed acts as an underwater forest that absorbs carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous, making it a water purifier, while also creating a new habitat for a diversity of marine life. Seaweed as a food is full of nutrients and excitingly it has the potential to be used as an alternative to animal feed to reduce methane gases and as a bioplastic to replace plastic packaging. In the future it could be used to fight climate change by replacing carbon-intensive products and supporting a lower-carbon food system.
116 x 101cm (paper) 129.5×113.5cm (frame)
Copyright the ArtistPhoto by Matthew Hollow
AFYO will continue the important legacy of projects including Art For Your World (2020) and Tomorrow’s Tigers (2018- 2022) which have raised £2.2 million for vital conservation work. Funds raised by AFYO will support projects which are focussed on ocean health.
Examples of WWF-supported projects seeking to improve ocean health include Wales’ first community-owned regenerative ocean farm at Câr y Môr, producing sustainable seaweed and shellfish; the reintroduction of native oysters to the Firth of Forth, absent for over 100 years, through the Restoration Forth programme; and the regeneration of the world’s tropical coral reefs through the Coral Reef Rescue Initiative.
Art For Your Oceans opens on the 7th of May, 2025 until the 15th of May, 2025 at Sotheby’s 34 – 35 New Bond Street
©2025 WWF, Artwise
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