Climate and Sustainability in our exhibitions

At Gallery Oldham we place issues of sustainability and climate at the heart of our exhibitions programme. This page is a record of our recent work in this area.

Minute to Midnight, December 2024 – March 2025

The title of the exhibition is derived from the Doomsday Clock, which was developed in 1947 as an indicator showing how close humanity is to self-destruction. This exhibition shows five artists’ responses to themes including the climate and biodiversity emergencies, pollution and carbon consumption and release. The artists were Rebecca Chesney, Antony Hall, Mishka Henner, Adele Jordan and Rae Story.

Two of the artists’ works were supported by specimens from the natural history collection. Bird taxidermy appears on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red and Amber Lists and was display alongside the piece by Rebecca Chesney. A now locally extinct pressed plant specimen of an orchid from Oldham in 1864 was displayed with Adele Jordan’s work.

Devotions to the Goddess Flora, by Ruth Moilliet, 2023

The title of the exhibition comes from a quote used in an essay by a local Victorian botanist Thomas Rogers. He and three others travelled from Oldham to Scotland to study and collect mountain plant species. A further expedition included the botanist James Nield, who wrote a second essay. These papers were preserved in a beautifully bound book, Botanical Excursions, Breadalbane and Grampians 1874-1876 .

Ruth Moilliet created a response to these written accounts and the modern-day plight of these species, many now endangered, due to a warming climate by creating larger-than-life sculptures. These were made from discarded single use plastics and formed a huge hanging installation. Her work was supported by historical plant specimens collected on these expeditions now held in the Gallery Oldham collections.

Our Plastic Ocean, by Mandy Barker, 2022-23

This touring exhibition transforms plastic debris from shorelines into powerful and captivating images. At first glance, the images look like sea creatures suspended in the darkness of the sea, but closer inspection reveals a more disturbing reality. From footballs to fishing nets, cotton-buds to coffee-cup lids, Mandy Barker highlights the incongruous plastic items now found across the world in our seas.

In one photograph she documents the 276 pieces of plastic found inside the stomach of a 90day old albatross chick. Currently, 8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year and if these trends continue, our oceans could soon contain more plastic than fish.

The Nature Table, by Sheila Tilmouth, 2022

Human impact and climate change are important themes in much of Sheila’s work. Her work is observational and celebrates the beauty of living things, even the incredibly small but essential organisms on which all larger organisms depend. For example the Great Raft Spider that Sheila featured in her work is found in only 3 UK sites in East Anglia and is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List because of human impact on its habitat.

Sheila’s artworks were supported by fungus models, fly model, insects, bird and mammal taxidermy and bird nests and eggs from the Gallery Oldham natural history collection.

Rain Drop to Corporation Pop, 2020

This exhibition explored water from the start of its journey in the clouds through all freshwater aquatic environments and used objects chosen from across the Gallery’s collections. Water is an essential element for all life that has ever lived on the planet and makes up important part of our local wildlife habitats.

This exhibition included items from Gallery Oldham’s natural history collection, including water snails, dragonflies, frogs, toads and newts, as well as all manner of ducks and geese. Oldham became the most important spinning town in the world because it is nestled high in the hills making the most of the damp climate required to spin cotton. Water collected in newly constructed reservoirs was important for an expanding human population to ensure good health and hygiene as well as textile processing.