This October, one of the world’s largest public art exhibitions will transform streets, stations, and public spaces across the UK and Brazil into a gallery confronting the climate crisis.
The Gallery: It’s Not Easy Being Green will run from 7 October–3 November in the UK and 14 October–12 November in Brazil, bringing together 16 international artists on thousands of digital billboards and public screens, reaching millions in the lead-up to COP30 in Belém. Part of the British Council’s UK/Brazil Season of Culture, it is designed to take the climate debate out of conference halls and into the everyday spaces where people live, work, and travel.
Curated and produced by Artichoke, the season invites artists to treat art as a catalyst for dialogue on urgent political issues.
Highlights include:
Muhammad Amdad Hossain (Grace on Waste): exposing the hidden human cost of consumerism through striking photography of landfill workers in Bangladesh.
Hannah Starkey (Defend Mother Earth): reframing protest through portraits of older women leading climate action, who use their freedom from career risks to fight on behalf of future generations.
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA (Food Man): balancing food, farming, and climate change in a powerful meditation on the fragility of global food systems.
Ackroyd & Harvey (Protector): growing portraits of activists in living grass, reclaiming activism as protection of the Earth itself.
Professor Ed Hawkins (Warming Stripes): a now-iconic climate data visualisation, making global heating visible in a single glance and confronting climate denial with undeniable evidence.
With works ranging from photography to land art and data capture visualisation, this season asks us to face the climate emergency in all its urgency, resilience, and complexity.
