It is possible to trace the growth of environmental art as a “movement”, beginning in the late 1960s or the 1970s. In its early phases it was most associated with sculpture—especially Site Specific Art, Land Art and Art Povera – having arisen out of mounting criticism of traditional sculptural forms and practices which were increasingly seen as outmoded and potentially out of harmony with the natural environment.
Robert Smithson, the artist I mentioned above, organised an exhibition in New York in 1968 titled simply “Earthworks”. All of the works posed a challenge to conventional notions of exhibition and sales, in that they were either too large or too unwieldy to be collected and only photographs represented most works.
The expanding term of environmental art also encompasses the scope of the urban landscape. Just as the earthworks in the deserts of the US west grew out of notions of landscape painting, the growth of public art stimulated artists to engage the urban landscape as another environment and also as a platform to engage ideas and concepts about the environment to a larger audience.
Sustainable art might be an alternative term to environmental or green art, in recognition of the challenges that sustainability brings for contemporary art as a whole. I personally see my own work as being highly sustainable, largely due to the materials I work with in my recycled works and the messages they convey and in that sense could easily be placed under this category, however for the moment it looks that the term “Environmental Art” is taking the main stage when it comes to art created with these messages.
