Twenty years ago, John Gerrard photographed an oil spill off the coast of Ireland. He\u2019s been fixated on the politics, geographies, and aesthetics of hydrocarbons ever since.<\/p>\n
In his 2022 series \u201cPetro National<\/a>,\u201d the Irish artist cast the outline of countries as oil slicks adrift on the world\u2019s ocean. The 196 NFTs were at once beguiling and unsettling, the allure of their iridescent sheen undercut by the catastrophes they depicted. Its brilliance was that a country\u2019s oil consumption determined the size of its spill: the bigger the polluter, the greater the beauty.<\/p>\n John Gerrard, Petro National<\/i> (2022). Photo: Pace Gallery and Art Blocks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Gerrard\u2019s latest clarion call is \u201cWorld Flag,\u201d launched by Pace Gallery\u2019s Web3 platform Pace Verso<\/a> in partnership with Art Blocks on June 28. In structure, it echoes \u201cPetro National,\u201d offering NFTs for each of the world\u2019s countries, and exchanging oceans for deserts and oil slicks for flags.<\/p>\n Its visuals, however, are starker, its messaging blunter. If the oil spills teetered towards abstraction, the flags of smoke, which stand exposed in dull landscapes of endless sand, are representational and offer no such relief. Gone also is the luxury of high-resolution with the entire project adding up to 112 kilobytes in size.<\/p>\n The images are austere, the idea of a country claiming an utterly arid territory absurd. And that\u2019s the point, humanity is knowingly racing towards ecological disaster<\/a>. With \u201cWorld Flag,\u201d Gerrard baked politics into the aesthetics, here he also works it into the sale\u2019s mechanics. The flags will be sold in order of carbon dioxide emissions, based on 2019 data from ClimateWatch<\/a>, beginning with China and ending with Fiji, which signed a legally binding commitment<\/a> to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.<\/p>\n John Gerrard, World Flag #30 (Venezuela)<\/em> (2023). Photo: John Gerrard \/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201c\u2019World Flag\u2019 is set in what I call \u2018future deserts\u2019\u2014a hot lifeless world we are hurtling towards by burning 100 million barrels of oil a day,\u201d Gerrard told Artnet News, noting the frustrating inaction he\u2019d witnessed at the three UN Climate Change<\/a> conferences he\u2019d attended. \u201cTrapped and competing from their nation states, we do not have collaboration or consensus on consumption.\u201d<\/p>\n There is, of course, a tension at play between the project\u2019s anti-carbon message and the reality of its footprint. In response, Gerrard is donating 10 percent of proceeds to a nonprofit organization that is restoring a temperate rainforest in Ireland\u2014which, for the record, ranks 73rd in carbon dioxide emissions.<\/p>\n Gerrard sees \u201cWorld Flag\u201d as extending a triptych of smoke flags built in large game engines over the past half-decade. It began with 2017\u2019s \u201cWestern Flag,\u201d which stamped a black plumed flag in the virtual sands of Spindletop, Texas, the oil-rich terrain that birthed our dependence on hydrocarbons. It became the first NFT in Los Angeles County Museum of Art\u2019s<\/a> collection earlier this year.<\/p>\n John Gerrard, Western Flag<\/i>, (2017). Courtesy the artist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Next came \u201cFlare,\u201d a work that turned Gerrard\u2019s sullen gaze toward the burning oceans and was staged alongside Cop26 in Glasgow and later at Pace.<\/p>\n![\"John](\"https:\/\/news.artnet.com\/app\/news-upload\/2023\/06\/Venezuela_1_0606_1622-1024x1024.png\")
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