Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab at Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2024
Stay tuned for updates & how to see our work here and in the newsletter...

Eco-Art Workhop with orphans in Kenya
We had the heart-opening opportunity to present an eco-art cyanotypes workshop with the 240+ orphans living at the IAmVerse Center for Excellence in remote Kenya. The agility and curiosity of these children is boundless. We discuss the history of the medium, the activiation of the sun in the chemistry and then made almost 100 prints!

 
Coral Projects: South Africa
As I’ve been traveling the world making eco-art to heal the humans-oceans relationship, I collaborated with underwater photographer Juneid “JP” Petersen in Cape Town, SA. He captured these images of a temporary siting in False Bay of my eco-sculptures. Notice how the sea life loves the piece!





Coral Projects at the United Nation’s World Ocean’s Week 2023 at the Explorers Club, NYC
I’m so delighted to have works in the Corals and Sea Horses Aquarium at the Explorers Club!
The greatest honor of my career to date is the moment we first put the pieces in the tank and instantly all three sea horses came over to the work and the male wrapped himself around one of my pieces! It is clear to me that they knew the work is for them and made with love and admiration. They stayed wrapped around and hanging with my pieces the whole week! I’m so tickled to work with them! Super thanks to the team at the Explorers Club for an incredible week!






Demystifying NFTs: The Award Exhibition
December 15 to 31, 2022
Inside Voxel Metaverse and at 266 W 37th Street, NYC

Presented by New York Foundation For The Arts (NYFA) and Laura Ó Reilly
Opening event is Thursday, December 15th from 6-9 pm EST inside the Voxels Metaverse.

RSVP here:  https://NYFA_NFT_Award_Exhibition.eventbrite.com 

Buy your Porthole Waves NFT and support Coral Projects on Opensea.io






CORAL PROJECTS: Re-wilding a Painted Ocean
August 30, 2022
14:00 to 18:00
City of Nardo public beach, along the rocks to the right
free and open to the public

Eco-contemporary art sculptures underwater by Vanessa Albury
Hosted by Primo Piano Special Projects
Funded by Foundation of Contemporary Art


Sei i nvitato a vedere un'installazione sito-specifico di opere d'arte subacquee ecologiche nel Mar Ionio oggi. 

Entra nelle scale pubbliche e segui la parete rocciosa sulla destra nell'acqua 

Gratuito, tutti incoraggiati a partecipare!

A cura di Primo Piano Progetti Speciali
Finanziato dalla Fondation for Contemporary Art

Coral Projects’ First Five Years
Eco-Urgency at Lehman College Art Gallery
December 2021 to April 2022


I’m very pleased to share that an installation of the first 5 years of Coral Projects is now on view at Lehman College Art Gallery in co-organized with Wave Hill curated by Bartholomew Bland, Gabriel de Guzman, Jesse Bandler Firestone, Eileen Jeng Lynch and Deborah Yasinsky, titled Eco-Urgency: Now or Never. It is on view thorgh April 23, 2022. Book a reservation to see the show here 8 days in advance. (The first part of the show was at Wave Hill through December.) It is hard to believe I’ve been dreaming and schmeing for Coral Projects for 5 years! In this presentation you’ll find the video from Everglades Art Lab, a print portoflio of images from the site-specific works we made in the Everglades and the environs, sketches and plans for underwater pieces, and artworks that are small scaled versions of future underwater eco-contemporary art pieces.

Artists for Eco-Urgency:
Vanessa Albury, Allora & Calzadilla, Tatiana Arocha, Samantha Box, Hannah Chalew, Lionel Cruet, Nicky Enright, Rachel Frank, Alicia Grullón, Alison Janae Hamilton, Susan Rowe Harrison, Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmons, Mary Mattingly, Alison Moritsugu, Alexis Rockman, Francesco Simeti, SPURSE, Candace Thompson, Will Wilson, Natalie Collette Wood, Suné Woods, Sasha Wortzel and Ken + Julia Yonetani.



Feb 2020


We are in the swing of our Kickstarter campaign to create our collaborative piece with Sharon Norwood until Feburary 22 at 1pm EST! Check it out and share it with just 1 other person who is into the oceans, art and sustainability. 

SciArt Initiative’s Julia Buntaine Hoel interviews our Founding Artist and DIrector Vanessa Albury about Coral Projects in the February issue of SciArt Magazine. Get a lifetime subscription and read about how Coral Projects started and our big plans! 



Fall 2019


Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab is a special project feature at UNTITLED, ART 2019 in Miami sponsored by Benrubi Gallery! We create site-specific, ecological works with the delicate and verdant Everglades environment, hosted by Reverend Houston Cypress of Love the Everglades. Cypress is a resident of the expansive wetlands and a Miccosukee tribe member. Participating artists are Rachel Frank, Locus (Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen,) and Vanessa Albury. To fundraise for the travel costs and celebrate our first live ecological art project, Rachel Frank and Vanessa Albury have created limited edition series! See below. Email Vanessa for tax-deductible donations and purchases.

We are overwhelmed by the supportive press coverage of our work! The Guardian quotes our Director Vanessa Albury in their Miami Art Week headline title by Nadja Sayej ‘The Idea Is That Art Can Help,’ How Art Basel Tackled the Climate Crisis and elaborates on the project.
”Another project that taps into ocean pollution is Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab, an eco-art project spearheaded by the Brooklyn artist Vanessa Albury. Along with a group of artists, she used her booth at the UNTITLED Miami Beach art fair to promote an upcoming underwater project, where they’re making a coral reef out of ceramic, glass and reusable aluminum, which will launch at the Oracabessa Bay Fish Sanctuary in Jamaica next year. “What I have learned is that we all want the planet to be OK, and we all want to be part of a positive impact,” said Albury. “The idea is that art can help, brings relief.”

Presented by Benrubi Gallery, it features artworks by Albury, Rachel Frank, Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen with the Reverend Houston Cypress of Love the Everglade. The group are inspired by the ocean advocate and marine biologist Sylvia Earle. “The planet is resilient, so is nature and those who have witnessed the worst still have hope,” adds Albury.”

We are so thrilled that The Art Newspaper features our project in their Miami Art Week preview under the title “Untitled art fair takes on the human cost of climate crisis.” Jacoba Urist says,
”Attention is also pulled specifically to the changing climate’s impact on Floridians. Benrubi Gallery displays ecological interventions in Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab, an artist-led initiative that includes Vanessa Albury’s floating screens woven from plant debris in the wetlands, blurring the boundary between human beings and nature.”

Hyperallergic also had some flattering words about Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab in Your Concise Guide to Miami Art Week 2019 article by Valentina di Liscia.
”And there’s so much more: in the Special Projects section, curated by UNTITLED artistic director Omar Lopez-Chahoud and guest curator Jordan Stein, Benrubi Gallery   will show video footage of Coral Projects’s “Everglades Art Lab” (2019), a series of sustainable installations in the Everglades. “All our supplies are either ecological materials from the site or leave a neutral footprint, if not a positive impact, on the Everglades,” reads a statement from the artists on UNTITLED’s website. I have a feeling this might be one of the most moving works I’ll encounter during my fair excursions. “

Michael Anthony Farley included our Untitled Special Project in his piece Diverse and Dynamic: Increasing Multiplicity at Untitled Miami for Bmore Art.

“Special Project: Coral Projects, Everglades Art Lab presented by Benrubi Gallery, a collaboration between Vanessa Albury, Rachel Frank, Thale Fastvold, Tanja Thorjussen, with Reverend Houston Cypress of Love the Everglades.

These artists all made work in and about the Everglades, and here they’re showing mainly video documentation, an installation of local plants, and some small photos and ceramics. Apparently a highlight for the artists in their swampy project was an ibis bird interacting with the sculptures! Next, they’re planning an underwater exhibition in Jamaica.

When I talked to Vanessa Albury she told me, “We love art critics! Everyone comes to you with an opportunity to grow, to realize what you did wrong and learn from it.” What a nice thing to hear!“

Rachel Frank

Mini Mangrove Kernos Offering Vessel (edition of 4 unique vessels), 2019
Stoneware ceramic with glazes
4.5 x 4 x 4" (vessels may differ in size slightly)

$600 each (regular price $750) or $2000 for the set

Vanessa Albury
Coral Projects Still Life 1, 2019

Inkjet on fine art paper with description key

edition of 10, 16 x 20 inches

$500 each (regular price $1200)

More about Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab:
Coral Projects integrates contemporary art with ocean-sustaining techniques of marine sciences, merging the best of both the world of ideas and of environmental re-wilding. In the throws of the Anthropocene, at Coral Projects we see that art presents an opportunity to expand our audience and consider how creating can benefit nature, animals and humans. Everglades Art Lab is our experimental space for artists to study how to engage with nature substantively. For Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab, we install a series of site-specific interventions in the Everglades with UNTITLED, ART during Miami Art Week by Founding Artist Vanessa Albury, a decent of South Floridians, in collaboration with Rachel Frank, the Norwegian collective Locus (Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen,) and the Reverend Houston Cypress, a resident and cultural ambassador of the Everglades. All our supplies are either ecological materials from the site or leave a neutral footprint, if not a positive impact, on the Everglades. Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab is a testing ground for our upcoming underwater sculpture exhibition permanently sited on a regenerating coral reef at Oracabessa Bay Fish Sanctuary in Jamaica in 2020.

Coral Projects: Everglades Art Lab will explore working methods for artists to engage harmoniously with the natural environment, creating a laboratory for art experiments. At UNTITLED, ART we present video of footage of our ecological art installations as they change with the habitat and return to the wetlands. Vanessa Albury will create floating screens from woven plant debris in the Everglades dissolving the veil of separation of humans and nature. Her screens create light play through the waters before disintegrate into the sea. Rachel Frank combines her ceramic offering vessels with temporary forms from the Everglades mud, observing the natural life in the Everglades with temporary still life scenes. Thale Fastvold and Tanja Thorjussen of Locus perform a reverent honey ceremony with trees in the park. The series of brief and ecological interventions will be presented on a monitor at UNTITLED, ART and be accompanied by a selection of native plant specimens and seating for an immersive experience.