Art For Your Oceans

Details

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 17 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 7–15 May 2025 (free and open to all).

The Art For Your Oceans artists are: Max Boyla, Andrew Cranston, Laura Footes, Laura Ford, Anya Gallaccio, Antony Gormley, Nick Goss, Mona Hatoum, Lubaina Himid, Emily Kraus, Harland Miller, Beatriz Morales, Daisy Parris, Emma Stibbon, Emma Talbot and Caragh Thuring.

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.

OCEANIUM CEO and co-founder Karen Scofield Seal said, “Art For Your Oceans is a fantastic initiative to show the unique properties and potential of OCEAN INK, while contributing to WWF’s pivotal ocean conservation work. OCEAN INK can replace harmful solvent-based inks and is more sustainable than traditional water-based inks due to its fully biodegradable components.”

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 supporting 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.
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 1.5°C, 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.

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.

THE OCEANS: A SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE:
Our oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface.
Provide over half of the global oxygen supply.
Absorb over a quarter of the carbon dioxide we produce and regulate the climate.
Despite the vastness of the oceans, human activity is devastating ocean ecosystems.
At a time when humankind is faced with the triple challenge of feeding a growing population, keeping global warming below 1.5 °C, and reversing the decline of biodiversity, our oceans are our most powerful ally.