Oil spills, plastic, rising seas: artists invoke climate breakdown in San Francisco exhibition – in pictures

Tuula Narhinen, Baltic Sea Plastique.

Finnish artist Tuula Narhinen’s multidisciplinary practice centers around playful investigations into the natural world. In this series of sculptures and a related video, the artist transforms plastic trash that has washed ashore into unlikely aquatic specimens

Chester Arnold, Scenes From An Age Of Heavy Seas.

Chester Arnold’s daunting seascapes forewarn disaster close to home. In each ornately framed oil painting, rowboats and ships struggle helplessly in raging waters off the coast of northern California. As rising global temperatures cause extreme weather events, and increasingly powerful ocean waves destroy homes and force migration, Arnold’s work imparts a sense of things to come

Doug Aitken, migration (empire).

Aitken’s 2008 film, migration (empire), explores the complex relationship between the American wilderness and the sprawling built environment, asking what happens when the natural and man-made collide. Wild North American migratory animals who have taken up residence in vacant motel rooms, are shown engaging with their new environs according to their instincts

Gulnur Ozdaglar, The Last Reef.

This translucent sculpture, suspended from the ceiling, gives viewers a sense of looking up at a complex aquatic organism from underwater. The artist upcycles plastic bottles by applying heat, drilling, cutting and shredding, to evoke the appendages and diaphanous body structures of various forms of sea life

Brian Jungen, Tombstone.

The sculpture by the Canadian First Nations artist is made of white, plastic Rubbermaid step stools reassembled into the shape of a turtle’s shell which rests atop a platform of 32 black, metal filing cabinets. The work references Turtle Island, a name for North America used by many Indigenous communities, while the filing cabinets allude to the colonial bureaucracy that American and Canadian governments have inflicted upon Indigenous peoples through broken treaties, violent land grabs and false promises of sovereignty

Daniel Beltra, Oil Spill #12.

An aerial view of the oil leaked from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead. The BP-leased oil platform exploded and sank after burning, leaking more than about 200,000 gallons of crude oil to the sea a day from the broken pipeline

One Beach Plastic, for here or to go.

The piece, for here or to go, by Point Reyes-based couple Richard and Judith Selby Lang of One Beach Plastic, features a selection of sea-worn detritus including toothbrushes, toys, barrettes, bottle caps, connectors and fasteners, container fragments and unidentifiable objects rescued by the Langs

Andy Goldsworthy, Geophagia.

Salvaged and repurposed restaurant tables covered with white clay to resemble cracked and fissured surfaces, that will continually change as the work ages and dries, take center stage in Geophagia. The installation references white restaurant tablecloths and dish ware and evokes the historic drought ravaging California

Ana Teresa Fernandez, On the Horizon.

The installation comprises 16 cylindrical pillars, each measuring six feet tall and filled with water from the Pacific Ocean – a nod to the expected rise in sea-levels within the next century, which threatens coastal communities locally and globally

The Cliff House, a now shuttered restaurant in San Francisco dating back to the late 19th century, where the exhibition is held