Change of Climate

‍Change of Climate: Fourth Solo Exhibition, Glor April 24

Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2024

ENVIRONMENTAL ARTIST EVELYN SOROHAN REFLECTS ON HER PRACTICE AND RECENT EXHIBITION Change of Climate AT GLÓR.

Presented at glór in April, ‘Change of Climate’ was my fourth solo exhibition. This self-curated, experiential exhibition documented and celebrated my creative and collaborative Climate Art practice, which has emerged over ten years. My practice is essentially eco-visionary, exploring innovative interdisciplinary ways of reframing our relationship with our environment alongside developing participants’ creative and imaginative skills in a multidisciplinary framework.

 Photography, painting, installation, and socially engaged art are my chosen media, as I work across three core strands: research, studio, and participatory art. These interconnecting strands rely on collaborations with environmental scientists, educators, and public participation. With a background in education and leadership, I have been able to develop the necessary communication skills to form these important partnerships. One of my most successful collaborations involved creating an arts-based Climate Action Programme for schools with Clare Education Centre and Dr Alice D’ Arcy of STEAM Education – a company established to address critical and creative gaps in the education system (steam-ed.ie).

 Importantly, videos and collages of this process were exhibited in the show, and participants’ creations were given equal weight to my own work. I believe in the democratisation of contemporary art, with participatory processes becoming significant markers of success.

 Within every fibre of my being, I feel I have no choice but to make art that reflects the greatest threat to life on earth: climate change. I use zero-carbon methodologies and mediums to evoke public discussion and creativity, and my physical works are created from human plastics and old acrylic paints. I deliberately chose these materials to draw attention to the damage that fossil-fuel energy and plastics are doing to our climate. Participants are invited to use alternative materials in the experiential climate challenges I set within the workshops.

 As visitors interacted with the exhibition, they embarked on a journey through different sections, reflecting in-depth examinations of our ‘Change of Climate’. The larger pieces visually document macro views of Western consumerist and capitalist culture, while the micro views depict tiny but magnificent insects from my local lake. These were inspired by ‘WarmingStripes’, created by Professor Ed Hawkins to vividly show how average global temperatures have risen over two centuries (reading.ac.uk). The contrast between these perspectives is an essential part of the show, reflecting on how these local bio-indicators symbolise a human-made, global, catastrophic challenge.

As I collaborate with scientists, I am both fascinated and scared, and feel a tremendous urgency to live more sustainably. I learned that a third of native wildlife in my area ha sdisappeared since 1975, my birth year. This leaching of life and colour from my locality and the broader global habitat is interpreted in my works using coloured barcodes inspired by Hawkins’s stripes.

In conjunction with the work, I facilitated workshops in glór studio, enabling hundreds of pupils to appreciate nature and climate as they created the forms of their favourite wildlife using recycled plastics and paper. Their work was photographed and added to the exhibition as it grew throughout the show, alongside their imaginative coastal villages that included their very own glaciers made from my large ice cubes. I’m honoured that my show was very well received, with over half of the pieces being sold to private and public bodies, and hundreds of people visiting and creatively responding, including 14 school groups and three community groups.

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 the ‘Change of Climate’ ran at glór in Ennis from 10 to 24 April. The exhibition was co-funded by the Clare Arts Office, Creative Schools, and the Clare Creative Ireland Community Fund.

glor.ie

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One environmentalist noted Sorohan is an "architect of positive climate actions."

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