'Nature' is a difficult word either to use or to avoid and it is used here to denote a far wider reference than the terms ‘landscape’ or ‘environment’. Many past projects and investigations have fought shy of such a vast and complex subject.

Virtually all commentators in books or exhibitions have, until very recently, narrowed their analysis of artists working in relation to the natural world within a construct that they usually refer to as ‘Environmental’ or ‘Land Art’ – with some projects more narrowly defined to simply mean ‘art made of and in nature’.

The important symposium ‘The Future of Nature’ at the Tate in 1994 opened out the discussion and its subsequent book addressed the issue of what cultural forms might be produced when new knowledges challenge and undermine traditional ways of conceiving the ‘natural’.

Nature is simply another 18th and 19th century fiction. Robert Smithson

We can talk about three basic concepts of nature but these interlock in different ways:

• Firstly, ‘nature’ - as a metaphysical concept through which humanity imagines difference and specificity. This concept questions humanity’s relationship to nature and our changing perception of what is ‘human’ and ‘cultural’.

In this sense, nature may be thought of as a social concept, involving issues of equality; ways in which prejudice, exclusion and discrimination in society on account of race, gender and sexuality originate.

• Secondly, ‘nature’ - as a realist concept which refers to the structures, processes and powers that operate in the world. This concept is of a nature to whose laws and processes we are subject, even though we harness them for human purposes.

In this sense, nature is largely a scientific concept involving the particular laws and processes that are the basis of all biological and technological activity. Such issues as genetic engineering, BSE and AIDS epidemics, carbon dioxide emissions leading to global warming all lead to society’s questioning of the authority of science and the modernist idea of ‘progress’.

• Lastly, ‘nature’ as a lay concept as it is generally used in everyday discussion. This is the nature of immediate experience and aesthetic appreciation, of ‘landscape’, ‘wilderness’ and the ‘countryside’ as opposed to the urban environment.

In this sense,‘nature’ is largely an environmental concept which speaks of how it is being destroyed and which we are asked to conserve, even though its form may have originally been partly or wholly the result of human activity. Exploitation, wastage, pollution, species depletion and unsustainable farming practices are all current issues that arise from this concern.

Nature – a place where birds fly around uncooked. Oscar Wilde