Climate and Art: Programming & Advocacy

Climate and Art: Programming & Advocacy

Panel talk: 6-8PM, Wednesday, 29th October

You can listen to the talk on Substack or on YouTube.

Viviana Checchia (Curator at Void Art Centre)
Vanya Lambrecht Ward (Artist)
Siobhan Mooney (Independent curator)
Katherine Sankey (Artist)
Niamh Schmidtke (Artist) 
Kate Strain (Curator at Kunstverein Aughrim)

Climate and Art: Programming & Advocacy brings together three artists and three curators to explore how contemporary art responds to this challenge, offering an unusual mirroring perspective that highlights synergies and divergences.
The diverse approaches and processes of the artists will show how different forms, methods, media, and perspectives can inform a reflection on ecologies, the relationship between humans and more-than-humans, and the polycrisis we are all experiencing.

The curators will walk us through the reimagination of their work in light of the climate crisis, its relevance and impact, how they navigate sustainable practices in production, and how they perceive their role in the community in this complex time.
This talk is a moment to compare and discuss experiences, challenges, and strategies for weaving advocacy into both artistic and institutional frameworks, and to critically examine the narratives around them. It’s a reflection on the role of the arts in shaping public discourse around the climate crisis, its complexity and its aim towards regenerative outcomes.

We invite the wider community and communities of interest to join us in this open conversation, and share their insights and perspectives. Time is set before and after the talk to gather informally. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions and share their thoughts and experience in a relaxed exchange, blurring the usual roles of panellist and audience.

Biographies

Viviana Checchia is a curator, programmer, and researcher active internationally, and currently Director of Void Art Centre in Derry where she instigated a living practice of Social Permaculture. Viviana is also Co-Director of ‘Vessel’, an international curatorial platform based in Puglia, South of Italy, for the support of social, cultural, and economic development through contemporary art.
Other posts include Residency Curator at Delfina Foundation, London, Senior Lecturer on the MFA at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg and Public Engagement Curator at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. Viviana has produced and contributed to a range of international projects, including the Young Artist of the Year Award, Ramallah and the 4th Athens Biennale.
Viviana has lectured on curatorial studies and contemporary art practice at amongst others: the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York and the International Academy of Art Palestine, Ramallah.

Vanya Lambrecht Ward is a visual artist with a social and sculptural practice whose research focuses on perception, decay, and relationships to space, place, and environment. Her work explores what leaves a mark, what remains as ‘waste’; and what we are made and remade of, using a variety of media. By employing ‘fungal thinking’; she investigates invisible and often intangible lines of relation, viewing waste and detritus as sites of potential and persistent life. These models offer alternative ways of thinking, relating, and being. These modes of connection serve as pathways for contemplating our relationships with our surroundings and cycles, aiding in the creation of new narratives and methodologies. Practically, these encounters and deliberations manifest in diverse forms, including drawing, paper, found and made materials, sculpture, social interactions, walks, talks, discussions, inks, digital media, books, and installations.
Vanya grew up in The Hague, The Netherlands and has lived in Ireland since 1996 where she completed a degree in Fine Art (2009) and Architecture (2018). She has a Masters in Art in the Contemporary World from NCAD (2011). She currently lives in Sligo, where she lectures in Fine Art at YAADA, ATU Sligo.

Siobhán Mooney is an independent curator and producer based between Dublin and Kerry. Her curatorial practice explores themes of place, memory, and traditional Irish folklore through the lens of ecology and the climate crisis, examining how environmental and cultural narratives intersect within contemporary art.
Siobhán is currently a co-director of Basic Space and has been the open call curator for the Earth Rising Festival held in IMMA for the past four years. Recent curatorial projects include co-curating Periodical Review 12 at Pallas Projects/Studios and Welcome to the Fire Station at Fire Station Artists’ Studios. Siobhán has a BA in English and Art History from UCC, an MA in Visual Artist Practices (curating pathway) from IADT and is presently undertaking a Diploma in Art and Ecology at NCAD.

Katherine Sankey is an Irish/settler-Australian artist, born in Paris and based in Dublin. Working primarily in sculpture and installation which deals with the fragile intersections of body, environment, and infrastructure— how planetary and human constructed systems connect with and impact our own anatomies and psychologies. Sankey’s process grapples with decolonising and re-territorializing matter and signification – researching both physically and through diving into the discourses of such thinkers as Karen Barad, Kathryn Yusoff and Lynn Margulis. Interrogating the position of humans on the planet through a geo-queering discourse, Katherine Sankey’s artworks occupy a liminal space between decay and adaptation – dynamically ‘inhabiting’ the exhibition environment - they navigate disturbance, repair, and multi-species resistance. Upcoming solo, Forest of Single Breaths at College Lane Gallery Howth Dublin, curator Jobst Graeve, 6 Nov – 9 Dec.

Niamh Schmidtke (b. Dublin 1997, they/she) is an artist, lecturer and arts facilitator based across London and Limerick. They explore the politics of green washing, economic jargon and the language of democracy through speculation, audio, ceramics and installations, centring intimacy as a form of decolonial praxis. They examine the relationship between listening and speaking, to consider the kinds of voices that deep time, the sea, or humans could have with one another. They currently lecture in the School of Architecture, Limerick, with an MFA from Goldsmiths, London and BA from LSAD. Awards include; Agility Award, Material Futures Residency at Cove Park Scotland and the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) Artist Development fund. They have exhibited across Ireland and internationally including TULCA; Salvage Agency, Galway (2024), Pulling Blood from a Stone (solo), Science Gallery Berlin (2024), DARE 2019, Orpheus Institute, Belgium and PULSE, Limerick City Gallery (2022). Their work is held in public and private collections, including the EIB’s permanent collection. They are a member of Lewisham Arthouse artists’ co-op where they co-organise the Graduate Award with Sara Willet. Since 2021 they have founded and developed Future Artefacts FM radio project with Nina Davies and Rebecca Edwards.

Kate Strain is founding CEO and Artistic Director of Kunstverein Projects CLG. In 2022 Strain established Kunstverein Aughrim, a curatorial production office that accompanies artistic practice through creative production. From 2016–2021 Strain was Artistic Director of Grazer Kunstverein, Austria. Strain collaborates on curatorial research and commissioning projects RGKSKSRG with Rachael Gilbourne and the Department of Ultimology with Fiona Hallinan.