It is thirty years since the seminal art exhibition, Clean Irish Sea, was displayed at Dublin City Gallery in 1988. This was arguably the first major Irish art show to specifically address ecological issues. This paper focuses on key works by two participating artists, Barrie Cooke (1931-2014) and Gwen O’Dowd (born 1957), placing their contribution to the show both in the context of their environmental interests, but also analysing their work in relation to a particular dilemma facing them as visual artists, but relevant also to cultural communicators in general addressing this vital subject, which is the problem of the aestheticisation of contentious situations. This essay is part of the author’s research project exploring the response of Irish artists to issues of landscape and environment in modern, postmodern and contemporary art.