Curated by Bakul Patki, The Gallery, Season 5, brings an artists’-eye view to the climate crisis debate and will reach millions of people.

It’s Not Easy Being Green features six direct commissions, one open-source artwork and 9 works selected from the open call, and ranges from photography to performance, sculpture to land art, and a striking data visualisation.

Martin Firrell, Creative Director of The Gallery, is a master storyteller. In a compelling presentation, originally created for our OOH partners, he brings the artworks to life, connecting them into a unified whole that reveals a richer, overarching narrative. Until now, this presentation has remained behind the scenes – but this season we thought, why keep it to ourselves? So, read on to discover more about the artworks!

Listen to this blog post:

The purpose of The Gallery is to address the big questions facing society and help us all to think about them in new ways. Probably the biggest question of all is, what are we doing to the environment?

This season’s theme is particularly grave because it might be that the human race will become extinct. It’s very emotionally charged, and artists are really good at channeling and using and expressing emotion! This is probably one of the most powerful of all seasons and definitely the most timely.

As Creative Director of The Gallery, I like to place the works in an order so I can tell a story about the theme based on the relationship between the different works. It’s quite arbitrary, of course, because the works will be seen in a random order as people move through everyday life, seeing bus stops and posters. It’s entirely random, but it pleases me to tell the story.

I wanted to begin looking at the set of 16 works with Hannah Starkey’s Defend Mother Earth. This work embodies the idea of defending the environment. It shows an older woman holding a placard that says “Defend Mother Earth”. It makes it personal, not abstract. I’m very interested in the idea of the Earth being feminine, the protest of the woman being feminine…

The theme It’s Not Easy Being Green is addressed by Hannah in a personal, embodied way.

Similarly, in Ackroyd & Harvey’s artwork, titled PROTECTOR: grass-grown images of activists who are aiming to protect the environment. The individuals featured are musician Marcus Decker, Indigenous activist Josimara Baré and poet performer Zena Edwards. The images are made using the process of photosynthesis. It is literally a grass-grown image responding to light. It’s a living artwork! Again, it shows this is personal, a human being standing up, connecting with the theme…

Then we come to Uýra Sodoma & Olinda Tupinambá’s work. They, too, personify the theme: the flowering, flourishing world, and the struggle to flourish on land (in Uýra’s work, Florescer); and the goddess of the sea raging as the sea is invaded by plastics and other pollution (in Olinda’s work, Marulho).

I love that those four works are all about addressing the issue through the person.

Then, following on from Olinda’s plastics in the sea, we have Hayden Kay’s work Eat, Sleep, Pollute, Repeat, which shows us what’s beneath the surface: the equal presence of plastics with fish and aquatic life. Plastic has become a sad fact of the sea itself.

Hayden Kay’s work depicts rubbish in water; Muhammad Amdad Hossain’s work Grace on Waste shows a rag picker on a huge toxic landfill site in Halishahar, Chattogram, Bangladesh.

Grace on Waste is a really powerful photograph. There’s the land filling up with plastics and rubbish, and then there’s the human cost of the people who actually have to pick it. Our theme is It’s Not Easy Being Green and being one of the people that sorts the recycling in this way is definitely not easy – it’s a hard life. Although it’s a very beautiful image from Muhammad, as well.

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA’s Food Man talks about the challenges around how food security will be undermined if we change the climate. What does that mean? What are the geopolitics of that?

Staying with the natural world, Chris Jordan’s CF000478, Unaltered Remains of a Laysan Albatross Fledgling, Midway Island is such a very beautiful and sad image: the albatross has been destroyed by plastic. And it’s worth noting that this image hasn’t been manufactured in any way – Chris found the bird like this.

The Krank’s artwork, Footprint is a huge earthwork visualising how the human race is literally stomping on the environment. Created in silence over 15 days on the Greek island of Paxos, the work spans a huge 1,000 m² in the shape of a colossal human boot mark, a potent metaphor for humanity’s destructive ecological impact.

Which brings me onto Arnolt Smead’s photograph, titled Evergreen, which also, coincidentally, was taken in Greece. Evergreen, as a brand, can be seen as an emblem of global commerce, but here it stands rusting and sun-scorched, and the weeds have actually started to creep up its base, slowly reclaiming the structure. With this image, Arnolt encourages us to consider not just what we build, but what we leave behind. 

A similar sentiment surrounds Ed Hawkins’ data visualisation, Warming Stripes. Now we’re in the realms of data and computing, using that technology to demonstrate visually how the environment has heated up over the last hundred-and-fifty years.

And, of course, heating leads to fire. Which, in turn, leads us to Deepak Kathait’s image of the forest burning, Untitled, from the series Nature-Nature. At first, this looks like a lightning strike, but actually, it’s an image of a wildfire in the Garhwal Himalayas in India. We’ve recently heard about wildfires in America and in Australia, but we don’t often hear about them in India. It’s also a very beautiful image and often destruction can be beautiful, which is another interesting observation this artist brings to the theme.

Venâncio Evensen Ulombe’s work Nature Cries For Help shows us the only way we can breathe is through the living earth, and yet we’re destroying it. In effect we are taking our own breath away. I think this is a wonderfully powerful image because it also has a medical quality, which leads us beautifully to Vanessa Wagneur’s work ESSENTIAL GREEN, with the green drip.

I know Vanessa sees this as emphasising how we need the Earth and the natural environment to nourish ourselves. But I also read this as the Earth needing us to give it a transfusion of care, attention, love, and green consciousness… That’s another interpretation I bring to that work. I think it’s hopeful: the idea that we could transfuse ourselves, or the Earth, to make us/it healthy again.

To me, Tiago Rocha Pitta’s Heritage says ‘we might be able to save the environment’. The boat is made by humanity, the trees are natural – maybe we can we can do the right thing and use our ingenuity to save the natural world.

Justin Brice Guariglia’s We Are The Asteroid contradicts that idea, saying ‘no, our true nature is that we are immensely destructive and we will be like the asteroid in a science fiction movie that blows the world to bits…’

There are only a few days remaining to catch It’s Not Easy Being Green in the UK. The Gallery, Season 5, will remain live until 10 November in Brazil.

For more information about The Gallery, visit thegallery.org.uk

Season 5 of The Gallery is in partnership with the British Council. For the first time The Gallery will expand beyond the UK to Brazil, as part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture.

In partnership with Bauer Media Outdoor, JCDecaux, Alight Media, Bay Media, BUILDHOLLYWOOD, Crystal Clear Media, Eye Airports, KBH Group and Outsmart (UK) and Altermark, Hezagono, Mude, RZK Digital, Sinergy Novas Mídias, The Voice, Trevo, WeOOH and 55 Mídia (Brazil).

With thanks to the Mubarak Ali Foundation and the Brazilian Embassy in the UK.