Earth: Art of the Changing World, Royal Academy

There was a time, not long ago in fact, when contemporary art could seem all too wrapped up in its own juvenile cleverness. It was all about being ironic and irreverent. Certainly a lot of it was achingly self-referential. But we eventually got fed up with all that. What’s more, we now live in less frivolous, more fearful times: recession has hit and the sea waters are rising, ready to flood us out and turn our congested cities into swampy, primitive marshland, like an apocalyptic J G Ballard novel.

So now the mood music is sombre, more earnest. Artists have once again turned their attentions to “the real world“, and this is reflected in Earth: Art of the Changing World, a group exhibition of 35 artists, including poet Lemn Sissay and novelist Ian McEwan, at the Royal Academy’s Burlington Gardens site. It’s a terrible title, to be sure, undeniably preachy and pious-sounding. But what about what’s inside? And will it only preach to the converted?

Initially it seems so. For a start, there’s this awful molecular structure thing that’s clinging like an oversized barnacle to the front of the building. Is it some deadly virus that will infect and wipe out swathes of the population, just like swine flu? In fact the piece, by Marcos Lutyens and Alessandro Marianantoni, represents a carbon dioxide scrubber molecule which, in theory at least, should be able to suck up harmful CO² from the atmosphere. So, a good thing, in the guise of an exceedingly ugly thing.

Then we have Spencer Finch’s crumpled-up blue plastic sheet, suspended above the stairwell of the RA’s foyer. It’s a cloud. In fact, it’s a representation of a particular cloud observed at a particular time and place: while visiting the Amherst home of Emily Dickinson the artist chanced to look up and, lo, there was this cloud. But though the crumpled plastic sheet looks nothing like a cloud - it’s blue for a start - we read that its presence “evokes mood and memory, while simultaneously reminding us of the thin, fragile layer of atmosphere that protects Earth’s environment“. Its inspiration may have been the sublime in nature; that doesn’t necessarily translate to the work.

But one can’t and shouldn’t be dismissive of all the works in this show, only some of which, like the molecule piece, were specially commissioned for the exhibition. Sophie Calle’s contribution, North Pole, wasn’t, and in any case one can’t imagine such a singular artist following any curatorial diktat, especially one as worthy-sounding as this. Calle is a mischievous and seductive story-teller, after all, whose biographical tales -  and they may be all the better for it - may be on the slightly tall side.

Here Calle presents a tale etched on tablets of white porcelain, like ancient scripts, and illustrated with photos. Her grandfather, fleeing the Nazis, sold his home in Grenoble in exchange for a diamond ring. His wife didn’t speak to him for a year, but the ring stayed in the family, to be passed down to Calle’s mother and then to Calle upon her mother’s death. Because her mother always wished to visit the Arctic, Calle buries the ring in a glacier there. She wonders if the jewel will be endlessly discussed as part of Inuit culture by anthropologists in thousands of years to come, or if it will be sold for a house in Grenoble. One can never predict the future with any certainty after all, and, hey ho, even what passes for hard evidence can mislead.

There are other delightful works in this exhibition, and this makes any preachiness easier to ignore. It’s always good to see Antony Gormley’s vast sea of tiny clay figures, pressed shoulder to shoulder, their round, imploring eyes all looking up at you in unblinking trust. They appear rather like gorgeously sweet, unsuspecting seal cubs that you might be about to club, though seeing the hundreds of huddled figures filling every inch of space in one gallery, your thoughts also run towards to over-population. Neither prospect is particularly delightful in itself, the piece nonetheless exudes a kind of cosy, brotherly warmth that makes you feel just a tiny bit tingly.

The exhibition is not without considerable beauty - where praise is due it should be for this rather than for its earnest aim to “provoke debate“. Tue Greenfort’s pink Murano glass jellyfish, Medusa Swarm, which throws ominous shadows against the wall, manages  be both menacing and beautiful, while Clare Twomey’s trailing garland of fragile unfired clay flowers (pictured above), some of which have already broken due to visitor footfall, are exquisite. You might want to see them, before they turn to dust.

Earth: Art of the Changing World continues at the Royal Academy, 6 Burlington Gardens, until 31 January 2010