This month there’s a small stretch of forest in City Gallery on Upper State Street — evergreens, ferns, moss — surrounded by a patch of dirt. It might take a moment to see that the plants aren’t rooted in the dirt, however. Rather, they’re planted in a woven aluminum boat, redolent of an ark. It will allow them to leave the gallery alive; maybe it will protect them from what’s coming.
The piece, Altered Futures, “explores what happens to the natural world beyond extreme environmental and climate-related displacements,” an accompanying note states. The mix of plants “may or may not survive in our warming planet,” but “whatever happens life on earth will persist, though different from what we imagine.” The boat, to the artist, Maria Markham, is a “metaphor. The weaving indicates the repair we need for the damage that has been done to our world and ourselves. The boat as a container for the works channels myth and reminds us of the possibility of life in new futures.”
The piece is part of “Altered Landscapes,” a show of works by Maria Markham and Sue Rollins running now at City Gallery on Upper State Street through Dec. 28. As an accompanying statement reads, “When old friends Sue Rollins’s and Maria Markham’s paths crossed again earlier this year, they found a great commonality in the work they were producing.” The resulting show is “a collaboration by the two artists that presents a statement about climate change and how we might all work together to save our planet.” Rather than succumbing to doom, however, “the exhibit seeks to imagine a way through our current precarities.”
“We don’t know what the future will hold, but through art, we imagine one that thrives, that provides sustenance for humans and non-humans alike, and that achieves ecological balance,” Markam is quoted as saying. “As artists, with our eyes wide open, we seek to excavate possibilities and divine the edge of other futures.
Rollins agrees: “Collective action, belief in the power of community engagement, and commitment to creating a sustainable future are our tools,” she is quoted as saying. “By making conscious choices in our everyday lives, remaining engaged and optimistic, let us work together to imagine and create an altered landscape that is full of possibility and hope.”
Both artists, however, first make sure that any sense of hope they present is earned. Rollins’s Before/After II “is a statement about our environmental crisis from a historical perspective. This painting has a ‘window’ of what was and is traditional, peaceful landscape surrounded by what could be or will be if we don’t act quickly.” Rollins is going for a “dark, chaotic and perhaps ominous” mood with that backdrop, though the window “is meant to be a beacon of hope — we can save what we have if we don’t ignore what we see around us and take action.”
In Memoires/Menaceur, the narrative is flipped. “The window looks into the possible future and is surrounded by the peaceful landscape that we have taken for granted.” But following the logic of the first painting, perhaps we’re looking at an even farther future, in which the crisis we face now is in the past, and we have averted catastrophe and come to rest in greater balance with the natural world.
Both artists are seeking, in short, to spur people to action by changing their perspective, to understand themselves more acutely as part of a much larger ecological system. Cosmic Pond takes this to ite greatest extreme in the show, as the window in the piece is displaying images from the Hubble Telescope, “reminding us of our place in a universe much greater than ourselves.” The moss, meanwhile, “illustrates the intelligence and intricacies of the natural world, reminding us of the importance of our interconnectedness with the beyond human.” In the artists’ move to an expanded frame of reference is the implication that that’s where hope in the face of climate change resides. If we don’t see it yet, perhaps it’s because we haven’t widened our horizons enough. But we can do it if we try.
‘Altered Landscapes’ runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., through Dec. 28, with an artists’ talk on Sunday, Dec. 15, 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Visit the gallery’s website for hours and more information.
