A Display Brings Awareness to Climate Change

Climate change is “a very real and serious threat that our entire planet is facing at the moment”.

That’s according to Rosa Mäkelä who is a performance and video artist and creates The Future is Clean and Round.

The Future is Clean and Round is an interdisciplinary piece that considers the emotional impact of the climate crisis and growing up within this uncertainty. The video piece is jointly created by Rosa Mäkelä and Elva Mulchrone.

The work was presented at 126 Artist-Run Gallery last Saturday and will remain on display until March 15.

Established in 2005, the gallery is an artist-led organisation integral to the visual arts culture in Galway.

Kaitlynn Webster, a member of the Board of Directors of the gallery, said: “Our whole mission is to support artists, give them a space to show their work, make sure they get paid.”

When it comes to why they displayed the work, she said: “We’re looking at meaningful ways that we interact with each other with the environment, with art.”

“So when the two of them applied, we felt that you can look at it pessimistically about the future and our relationship with the environment. But this is kind of a different view. If we go forward with a more optimistic view, when everything around can seem like it’s so negative, we thought that was an interesting take.”

Ms Mäkelä said the climate change was so real and serious that we need a huge systematic change to tackle it.

“But I think sometimes there’s too much focus on like the individuals habits like I don’t know the idea of like buying a bamboo toothbrush and using a keep cup are gonna change the world, like making all those tiny changes or whatever do what you can do. But it’s huge institutions and huge companies that are actually have the power to make a difference.”

She said she had so many conversations with her peers about the feeling of growing up among a climate crisis and the idea that the world might come to a catastrophic end without majorly lifestyle changes.

Ms Mäkelä had made other efforts on climate change.

“I’m acting in a play that we’re rehearsing at the moment. It’ll be on in the summer called Exit Music (For Our World) which is about climate change by War/War/War Theatre Company. It’s set in kind of an imagined future when our generation has become grandparents. And science has been able to pinpoint exactly when the world will end because of climate catastrophe.”

As a visitor to the gallery said, “the display brings a lot of awareness to the topic of climate change and makes people think about it”.