Phil Barton/ Landscapes

Phil Barton is an eco artist, rooted in a lifelong commitment to working with both the natural and built environment, uniting communities and organisations from all walks of life to take practical action. Often engaging with specific landscapes and incorporating materials sourced from those places, he works with print, lens-based media, installation, scientific evidence, and context-appropriate techniques to highlight the ongoing assault on our natural life support systems—trees, climate, and ecosystems—as well as the impact on the other-than-human life that shares this precious planet.

His creative work builds upon a 35-year career as a social entrepreneur in local environmental regeneration, during which he founded and developed several not-for-profit organisations, including Keep Britain Tidy, Groundwork, the Mersey Basin Trust as part of the 25-year regional Mersey Basin Campaign, the National Centre for Business and Ecology, and the Community Technical Aid Centre in Manchester, UK.

The driving force behind his practice is the urgent reality of the sixth great extinction and the arrival of the Anthropocene Era, crystallised by Gustav Metzger’s 2015 worldwide call for action to “Remember Nature.”