As the natural world comes increasingly under threat through the demands of human consumption, from food to fuel, it has never been more urgent for artists to draw attention to earth's precarious situation in their work.

Some film and video artists have turned an observational lens on the detritus and pollution of big business, such as Sandra Lahire's heart felt and confrontational work Serpent River. In this she charts the destruction of both landscape and livelihood for the Serpent River Community in Ontario in the wake of uranium mining, evoking the river's unseen radioactive toxicity in her experimental use of colour and superimposition. Chris Welsby's six screen reflections of river, sky and snow in Skylight is also concerned with human pollution, it was shot in the week following the explosions at Chernobyl, when 'the sky carried messages for everyone' (CW).

In her confrontational 2007 series Natural Disasters Grace Ndiritu transforms herself into a range of iconic personas, including the statue of Liberty. She exposes the consequences of globalisation and its effects not only on the landscape but also upon those peoples living closer to the land. Margaret Tait brings the dangers of abusing our natural world closer to home in a lyrical film of her Orkney home, Colour Poems, which marks the man made changes in the landscape.