The Outset Partners Grants 2020 awarded a Transformative Award jointly to the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in support of Climate House and the Serpentine Galleries, London in support of Back to Earth. Following an introduction by the Outset Partners, both institutions decided to work together on a series of initiatives founded on the principles of skills exchange and collaboration. This included the joint convening of a new network and think-tank of organisations, General Ecology Network, which decided to innovative thinking at the intersections of art and ecology.
Climate House reimagined Inverleith House as a gallery for the 21st century, ignited a new arts strategy across the Garden and highlighted RBGE as a visionary institution within the Climate Crisis. Climate House highlighted the global risk to biodiversity through an immersive installation, activated as a space for conversation and action created in collaboration with Australian artist Keg de Souza, who has previously had major exhibitions in Melbourne, New York, Vancouver and London. de Souza is known for her socially engaged art practice, using mediums such as inflatable and temporary architecture, food, video, text, illustration, mapping and dialogical projects to explore the politics of space. Collaboration is central to de Souza’s practice and the new vision for Inverleith House; Climate House aimed to inspire connections between artists, scientists, horticulturalists, scholars, activists, entrepreneurs, policymakers and visitors and local communities.
Back to Earth, a new, multidisciplinary and multi-year initiative, was the Serpentine Galleries’ 50th anniversary project. Launching in 2020, Back to Earth invited over sixty-five artists and creative practitioners to respond to the current climate emergency with forward-thinking and strategic artworks that are simultaneously environmental campaigns.
Over a period of a few years, Back to Earth collaborated with partner organisations to realise an ambitious artist-led programme, that included exhibitions, live events, publications, broadcasts, off-site and infrastructural projects, as well as public awareness campaigns. In addition, Back to Earth was conceived as the catalyst for a series of internal transformations within the entire Serpentine organisation, to embed ecological principles within the very fabric of the Galleries. The Serpentine is artist-led to its core. To that end, Back to Earth encouraged these transformations to also be driven by the imagination that artists bring to our everyday lives and to the way we work.
