Public presentations mark culmination of ‘The Air We Share’ residency programme
Galway Arts Centre, in conjunction with Galway City Council, today (18.06.25) announced details of the newly completed artworks created through the ‘The Air We Share’ artist-in-residence programme. The programme supports artists to work with local communities and creatively respond to scientific research on air quality and climate, conducted by local citizens and climate scientists from the University of Galway. The art projects will feature at this year’s Westside Arts Festival, which takes place from 8th to 12th July 2025.
Following their selection last November, the commissioned artists – Christopher Steenson, Leon Butler, and A Place of Their Own (Paula McCloskey and Sam Vardy) – have spent the past eight months developing innovative and collaborative works in close engagement with the Westside community and scientific partners.
Their works are:
- Christopher Steenson: With Airwalk, multidisciplinary artist Christopher Steenson invites participants to experience air quality in a radically new way through a guided ‘airwalk’ during Westside Arts Festival. Wearing wireless headphones, participants will hear a live soundscape generated from real-time air pollution data via a portable ‘ambient sensing system’, developed with guidance from scientists at the Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies at University of Galway. This system is inspired by meditation practices that encourage an open awareness, using the natural rhythms of breathing as a focus. In addition, a collaborative clay artwork developed with ceramicist Alena Postnikova and local participants will be on display throughout the festival.
- Leon Butler: Galway-based artist Leon Butler’s immersive installation Phosphene uses data from community air quality sensors to illuminate the invisible atmosphere and invites participants to explore Westside in a new light. During the festival, he will lead a hands-on experimental workshop, where participants will use phones and sensors to visualise air quality data and transform it into dynamic digital forms.
- A Place of Their Own (Paula McCloskey and Sam Vardy): For The 9 Freedoms for the Air, the artist duo have been working with a community group in Westside to explore the rights and responsibilities of humans and ‘air dwellers’ – microbes, dust, insects, gases, birds, and even fairies. Drawing on insights from scientists, folklorists, and legal specialists, the group has created a large collective textile artwork. During the festival, the public will be invited to observe a live collective stitching performance and to take part in an embroidery workshop inspired by the project’s imaginative exploration of air justice.
The artist-in-residence programme lies at the creative heart of ‘The Air We Share’, a collaborative climate action initiative launched in July 2024. The initiative explores the causes, impacts, and potential solutions to air pollution through artistic interventions, citizen science, and community action in Galway’s Westside.
‘The Air We Share’ brings together a consortium of local partners, led by Galway City Council, and including Galway Arts Centre, University of Galway, Westside Resource Centre, and Galway Culture Company. During their residencies, the artists worked closely with these partners and had access to their facilities, expertise, and networks.
Commenting on the commissioned works, Megs Morley, Director and Curator of Galway Arts Centre, said: “The artist-in-residence programme has been an incredibly rich and collaborative process, bringing together artists, local communities, scientists, and cultural organisations in Galway. Through their work, each artist has created a unique and imaginative lens through which we can reflect on air pollution, climate, and our shared environment. Art is uniquely positioned to make these complex issues tangible, relatable, and accessible to the public.”
Leonard Cleary, Chief Executive of Galway City Council, added: “Galway City Council is proud to support ‘The Air We Share’, a transformative climate action initiative that highlights air pollution as a critical environmental health risk and supports Galway’s wider climate ambitions. The residency programme demonstrates how creativity can raise awareness of air quality, foster deeper community engagement around climate action, and inspire cultural and behavioural shifts. As the project’s lead partner, we are delighted to have supported the artists over the past six months, and we look forward to seeing their innovative works presented at the Westside Arts Festival.”
James Coyne, the Chairperson of Westside Arts Festival, said: “’The Air We Share’ project is an excellent addition to the festival programme and a great opportunity for local people to engage with a range of artists with very different approaches and practices. The coming together of community, art and science provides a fertile space for the sharing of ideas and knowledge and for collaboration on the challenges posed by air pollution and climate change.”
The full Westside Arts Festival programme is available here. The artists’ workshops and the guided ‘airwalk’ are free to attend but must be booked in advance by contacting Westside Resource Centre on 091 528325. The collective stitching performance is drop-in and does not require booking.
The artists’ works will also form part of a public exhibition at Galway Arts Centre later this year, where expanded versions of these works will be presented from 15th August to 21st September, alongside a programme of tours and events. Further details will be announced in due course.
‘The Air We Share’ is a recipient of the Creative Climate Action Fund, an initiative of the Creative Ireland Programme, funded by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport in collaboration with the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment. The fund supports creative, cultural and artistic projects that build awareness around climate change and empower citizens to make meaningful behavioural transformations.
For further information, visit www.theairweshare.ie.
About the artists:
- Leon Butler is an artist, designer, and educator based in Galway City working at the intersection of art and technology. His work has been recognised by The Type Directors Club, 100 Archive, the Future Makers awards, Digital Media awards, Young Directors Awards, and the Irish Design Awards. In 2022, Leon was a Selected Artist of the European Media Arts platform 2022 with RIXC Centre for New Media Culture, Riga. His work Performance Surveillance premiered at the Biennale WRO in Wrocław in May 2023, before showing at NEME, Cyprus in June 2023, and in a solo show at RIXC, Center for New Media Art, Latvia, from July to September. Leon’s latest work is Dwelling, an XR dance performance and installation, which premiered as part of the Beta Festival in Dublin in November 2023 and showed as part of the Galway Film Fleadh 2024.
- With a practice that spans sound, lens-based media, text and digital systems, Christopher Steenson’s (b.1992, Northern Ireland) work bridges historical and speculative narratives to interrogate the politics of time, environment, and more-than-human-relations. Through these concerns, he creates artworks through which we can ‘listen to the future’. Recent presentations include The Sky is Falling!, Ormston House, Limerick (2024); mother tongue, The MAC, Belfast (2024); inching towards, Freelands Foundation, London (2024); Penumbra, LAVA, Mexico City (2024); Breath Variations, Flat Time House, London (2023); Soft Rains Will Come, VISUAL Carlow (2022); TULCA Festival of Visual Arts: The World Was All Before Them (2022). In 2020, Steenson presented On Chorus, a national public sound artwork utilising Ireland’s network of train station PA systems to broadcast field recordings of birdsong across Ireland. His work is held in the Arts Council of Ireland Collection, and he has participated in several national and international residencies, including Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, USA (2023) and Sounding Paths, Syros, Greece (2019).
- A Place of Their Own is an art & spatial practice founded in 2010 by Paula McCloskey and Sam Vardy. Their projects are co-inquiries with diverse collaborators, investigating the geopolitics of air, wetlands, nation-state borders, extraction, and kinship through an intersectional, anticolonial & feminist praxis. Core to their method are practices of fictioning (e.g. myth-making & science fictioning), through which they co-produce site-responsive performances, sculptures, and installations. They explored new imaginaries of wetlands in Wet/Land/Dwellers, Sheffield, UK (2022) as part of Arts Catalyst, the UK’s Emergent Ecologies Programme, and in Myths for a Wetlands Imaginary, London (2020), producing sculpture, films, sound work, performances, a collective zine. They have also produced significant work on nation-state borders, specifically in Ireland, developing the concept ‘Border Fictioning/s’ through their project Eile (2016-present), which has led to films, performances, sculptures, publications, and exhibitions. They are currently working on A Digital Counter Cartography of the Border in Ireland 1968-1998, (2021-present) funded by the BA/Leverhulme Trust.
