SEDIMENT Charity Edwards and Amelia Hine, Leela Schauble, Marian Tubbs, and Samuel Tupou | Curated by Simone Hine and Kyle Weise - Metro Arts
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SEDIMENT
Charity Edwards and Amelia Hine, Leela Schauble, Marian Tubbs,
and Samuel Tupou | Curated by Simone Hine and Kyle Weise
Metro Arts, 8-30 May 2021
1
Sediment brings together the work of five contemporary artists who utilise collage as an aesthetic through which to consider the human transformation of the environment. Laboratories, sea life, plastics, virtual organisms, micro- organisms, gold, oil, and fibre-optic cables merge and collide, with the ocean as conduit. Suggesting evolving networks, this restless flow of images look toward possible futures, both human and non- human.
SEDIMENT culture. The physical environment and
human culture have always been
Within a scientific context, sediment
intertwined, but the degree to which
refers to a material that is classified,
human activity is reconfiguring the
not by its chemical compound,
physical environment, and vice versa,
but according to its particle size.
is increasing at an accelerated rate.
The particle size of sediment is
determined by the ongoing process Geological stratification has
of weathering. In other words, a particular resonance in the
sediment is not defined by any contemporary moment, via the
inherent material quality that can be concept of the Anthropocene:
mapped onto a periodic table, but the name given to the current
is instead a physical object whose geological epoch, and describing
current state is determined by the this as being determined and
past and ongoing conditions that act constructed by human activity. Yet
upon it. As such, the term sediment the term is not unproblematic, for
refers to a material’s current state, it suggests a shared responsibility
as part of continuous, fluctuating among humanity, when the major
processes that extend beyond the contributors to climate change
present, into the past and future. are an elite minority of the world’s
population.1 The term also subtly
Sediment, as a free-flowing particle
ignores the many human cultures
derived from the breakdown
that have not contributed to climate
of materials that were once a
change, mass species extinction
congruous whole, has metaphorical
nor ecological devastation. As an
resonance with images cut from
alternative, the term ‘Capitalocene’
magazines, videos, and webpages.
has been suggested. This term
In this metaphor, collage can
explicitly links climate change to
be likened to the process of
the relationships between humans,
sedimentation, where these free-
nature and resources that have
flowing particles become fixed
been constructed by capitalism, and
in a new composition. Sediment
the industrialisation of extraction,
builds to create a record of different
production, consumption and
physical environments as they have
waste connected to this.2 As T.J
been reconfigured through time.
Demos notes, our era should at
Likewise, collage acts as a record
least be called the “petro-capitalist
of the reconfiguration of human
Anthropocene”.3
1
Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya conservationist approach in its
and Nancy Fraser similarly contemporary manifestations,
emphasise that it is fossil fuel as is evident when he praises
dependant capitalism, specifically, Tue Greenfort’s Diffuse Einträge
that has caused climate change: “It (2007) for bringing attention “to
was not ‘humanity’ in general but the ridiculousness of restorationist
capital that extracted carbonised aesthetics when they address the
deposits formed over hundreds of mere local effects of environmental
millions of years beneath the crust damage but ignore the structural and
of the earth; and it was capital that often global causes.”6 The undoing
consumed them in the blink of an eye of the nature/culture binary and the
with total disregard for replenishment recognition of the structural causes
or the impacts of pollution and of climate change are intertwined
greenhouse gas emissions. concepts. As Raj Patel and Jason W.
Subsequent shifts, first from coal to Moore argue, the construction of
oil, and then to fracking and natural a distinction between society and
gas, have only ramped up carbon nature, rooted in the development
emissions, while disproportionately of the mechanisms capitalism in the
offloading the ‘externalities’ onto 15th century, has enabled colonial
poor communities, often communities plunder and the commodification
of colour, in the global North and and destruction of the environment,
global South.”4 and is essential to the ongoing
expansion of capitalism. Against this
Furthermore, the term Anthropocene
dichotomy, Patel and Moore suggest
suggests a separation between
a ‘world-ecology’ that understands
human society and nature, in
humans within nature, offering “a
which nature is something ‘out
way of seeing how humans make
there’ on which humans act. This
environments and environments
approach to ecological thought
make humans through the long
is reflected in mid-twentieth
sweep of modern history.”7 An
century environmentalism and the
artistic approach sympathetic to this
advocacy for the conservation and
philosophy can be found in Demos’s
preservation of the natural world.
identification of contemporary
Artworks of the time reflected this
artworks that adopt a ‘political
idea, aiming to repair and restore
ecology’, and recognise nature
‘natural’ environments.5 Demos is
as inseparable from the bundle
particularly critical of this ‘restorative’
2
of financial, legal and scientific of the planet, particularly in the
discourses in which our physical build-up of carbon dioxide in the
environments are entangled.8 atmosphere. Deforestation, of course,
is one part of this, but energy use
Patel and Moore’s historical survey
and the burning of fossil fuels is the
is essential to their argument,
most significant factor. Tracking the
which emphasises the inevitability
astonishing growth of the Earth’s
of environmental destruction from
population in the second-half of
the structures of capitalism with
the twentieth century, McNeill
its endless reach for new frontiers
and Engelke argue that this is less
of profit. This is evident in their
significant than the integration of
consideration of 15th century
this population into high growth
examples, such as the devastation
consumerist lifestyles.11 The world
of the forests of Madeira for the
has become increasingly awash in
production of sugar, and the
stuff, with the expansion of consumer
European boom in silver, which saw
goods: manufactured, transported,
common lands essentially privatised
used and discarded. Indeed,
for the extraction of silver, and the
such is the expansion of stuff that
poisoning and destruction of forests
discarded objects, waste, is not
on which peasants relied for food
only an enormous industry, but has
and water.9 Yet, as J.R McNeill and
also become an emerging resource
Peter Engelke convincingly argue, the
frontier for capitalist expansion:
transformation of the environment has
mined for its buried resources and
undergone a particular acceleration
transformed into new products.12
since the mid-twentieth century.
Deforestation, to lead from Patel and As this world of stuff emerged, so
Moore’s aforementioned examples, too it was incorporated into the
has been seen since ancient times production of art. The moment
but the era since 1945 has seen in 1912 when Georges Braque
a significant and unprecedented pasted a piece of faux woodgrain
global increase in deforestation.10 wallpaper onto a drawing, set in
While the recognition of the long motion a history of collage that was
history of the structures and guiding by most accounts understood as a
concepts of capitalism is crucial, process by which lived experience
McNeill and Engelke emphasise was able to enter contemporary art,
the significance of the past 70 via the inclusion of objects drawn
years in the material transformation directly from life; a life increasingly
3
4
filled with objects.13 Writing from the thing and its representations. We
staunchly formalist position for which need to find ways to challenge
he became infamous, and ignoring such assumptions.”15 Inadvertently,
the political gesture of repurposing Greenberg’s modernist analysis of
images, Clement Greenberg collage provides insights through
articulated a specific problem which we can develop this challenge.
with this historical understanding of
The incorporation of faux woodgrain
collage: faux woodgrain wallpaper
and newspapers in Cubist collage
is an imitation of the same order as
suggests the emerging world
that of mimetic representation.14 In
of industrialisation, throw-away
other words, collage undermines any
consumerism, ubiquitous media and
distinction between the ‘authentic’
advertising. But more so, it is the
and ‘imitation’. While this may seem
jumble itself of collage that connects
like a glib point that is bound by
to the world of consumer capitalism,
the arbitrary logic of Modernism,
and its constant circulation of images
it does turn discussion toward the
and stuff, and the inseparability of
“appearance” of collage. The
these. Indeed, the distinction between
appearance being the haphazard
representation and life seems
collision of competing forces within
increasingly difficult to maintain as
a single composition. A system of
images gleaned from the internet
layering competing elements was the
collide, layer and merge in perpetual
content as well as method and form
motion across the screens which
of collage. In the spirit of collage,
are our constant companion, and
we can repurpose Greenberg’s
part of our everyday gestures and
argument, slice it from its formalist
tasks. Layering tabs, sharing images,
context and place it within the current
clicking through a checkout while we
discussion of the Anthropocene
track the arrival of our bus; this stream
where binary distinctions, such as that
of images is not a representation but
between nature and culture, authentic
a part of life, another layer of the
and imitative, are increasingly difficult
everyday.
to maintain.
Fredric Jameson’s analysis of late-
Stephanie Hessler, in her
twentieth century installation art
interdisciplinary analysis of deep-
suggests that all art has in some way
sea mining, argues that, “modernist
become media art: self-consciously
divides between nature and culture
aware of its role as media within a
also infer divides between the ‘real’
5
media system. Within this context, the context, collage can be broken
significance of works that combine apart from the modernist context in
various media is not the creation of which it arose, to be understood
a ‘supra’ media that would provide as a reaction against neat, unified
an authoritative cohesion, but in the narratives. In form and process,
relationship between the media. It collage both encapsulates
is the mix itself which is significant.16 and exploits the contemporary
A collage reflects the everyday, not experience of consumption and
because it uses elements drawn from waste, and its tumble of clutter. The
life but because its process, its mix discarded remnants of a world of
of colliding media and referents, is throwaway images and stuff are
the experience of the everyday. As the material of collage. Long at
Richard Flood writes, “Everything the forefront of waste as resource
is whacked together in fragments frontier, the techniques of reuse in
that temporarily cohere but cannot collage both critique and parallel the
holdfast. The density of information contemporary forms of capitalism in
becomes puzzlingly abstract while which it is entangled.
understanding takes a backseat to
Writing on the work of Marian
the aesthetic arrangement.”17
Tubbs, Hamish Sawyer emphasises
Understood for its reliance on Tubbs’s use of found materials,
detritus and for its processes of her assemblage of detritus, both
assembly and layering, rather than as sculpture and image. Moving
its coherence, contemporary collage between and intricately linking the
seems to encapsulate Amanda physical and the virtual, Sawyer
Boetzkes’s contrast between modern writes, “Tubbs draws equivalence
and postmodern art: “To critique between the discarded materials
modernist aesthetics, the ideal of she scavenges from the street and
stylistic progress, heritage, continuity, the ripped images and footage she
and artistic expressivity, postmodern pulls from the internet for her digital
art enacted its own ruination and assemblages.”19 In this context,
degradation. In its radical break it is unsurprising that the ocean
from the ideal of unified form and figures strongly in her practice.
content, postmodern art is always Philosophically, water, in its flows
already constituted through acts and movements, offers a way of
of collecting and accumulating thinking that links dispersed ideas
historical sediment.”18 Within this and forms. This is specifically relevant
6
7
for “acknowledging that climate change and the concomitant rising
change, disasters and critiques are sea levels. Indeed, as Nicole
not simply located in single sites […], Starosielski notes, the transformation
but the configuration of things and of the Arctic through climate
processes that bring them about are change has become an opportunity
constituted through entanglements, to find new paths for undersea
that draw together geographically, communication cables, which would
and also digitally, dispersed flows, further increase the capacity of the
objects and ideologies.”20 In networks that are contributing to the
more pragmatic material terms, the melting of Arctic sea ice and the
ocean is a significant site of waste expansion of the liquid ocean.23
and debris, with Tubbs involved in
Although the internet tends to
research into plastic waste in the
be understood via discourses of
ocean.21 More than this, however,
‘dematerialisation’, it is reliant on
the ocean, in its capacity as transport
vast physical infrastructures. If digital
route and as path for global
communication seems frictionless,
communication cables, is central to
and without borders, Starosielsksi’s
the global networks of both stuff and
study of undersea cable networks
digital communication which Tubbs’s
emphasises that it is in fact reliant
work engages, and which are the
on enormous abrasive materialities.
foundations of capitalism and climate
Undersea networks are defined
change.
by complex territorial, legal and
The research group Avalanche note financial arrangements, alongside
that “humans embrace the sea as their direct physical impact on local
their largest global infrastructure.” communities and environments.24
The ocean is a transportation Starosielski’s analysis of network
infrastructure that enables the infrastructure is part of a broader
movements of containers and movement towards an increasingly
goods. The ocean’s appeal is such materialist understanding of media.25
that humans transform the earth to Jussi Parikka, for example, expands
expand its flows, as exemplified by this to consider media both before
the construction and expansion of the it is media and after it ceases to
Panama and Suez canals.22 Building function as media. That is, Parikka,
on this logic, we could argue that informed by a refusal of the nature/
humans are further expanding the culture binary, considers the deep
ocean as infrastructure via climate time of media: from the formation of
8the mineral components used in their process – transformations of solids
construction to discarded media as to ephemeral and back. It swarms
toxic future fossils.26 and overwhelms, exhausts and
clouds.”28 The sedimentary formation
For example, Parikka’s analysis of
of layers of dust informs Parikka’s
media extends to the microparticles
study which slowly peels back
of aluminium dust created when the
layers of materiality and meaning,
surfaces of iPhones are polished
and is inspired by Robert Smithson’s
during their production. The creation
writing on sediment as text, and
of the fetishized, gleaming surfaces of
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s
iPhones, reliant on an array of metals,
post-linguistic philosophy: “Notions
is rooted in centuries of colonisation
of strata, sedimentations, double
and resource extraction. Moreover,
articulations, and an alternative
the aluminium dust created to
to the signifier-signified-model
achieve this glimmer becomes
are introduced as a way for a
a part of the global ecosystem,
postanthropocentric theory.”29
settling in soils and in the lungs of
factory workers. In dust, Parikka While our digital technologies
finds a conceptual inspiration. are reliant on a staggering array
Dust troubles our notions of matter, of rare earth metals and global
slipping between the immaterial and infrastructures, perhaps their most
the material, it spreads across the significant materiality is in the energy
planet and through the environment used in their production and use,
as a complex assemblage and, sourced mainly from fossil fuels.
in the case of aluminium dust, is Most of the energy used in the
inseparable from capitalist forms lifecycle of a computer, for example,
of exploitative labour relations is expended during its production,
and semiotic seduction.27 Dust, in and the source of the majority of this
its many materials, is everywhere. energy is fossil fuel.30 The extraction
Dust sprawls and accumulates of fossil fuels returns us to colonialist
and is a marker of the complex histories of uneven development.
intersections of human and geologic Through persistent oil spills and
temporality: “Dust forms geological exploration specific places have
strata. Dust marks the temporality been devastated. Such places are
of matter, a processual materiality described by McNeill and Engelke
of piling up, sedimenting, and as, “sacrifice zones, where the
– through its own million-year cost of energy extraction included
9pervasive ecological degradation. narrative of the success of the clean-
Among local species, only oil-eating up. BP, focused on containing the
bacteria benefited from the fouling of ‘image’ of the spill, and leveraging
soils and waters of these regions. But the media’s reliance on visibility,
people far away also benefited, in partly hid the extent of the disaster
the form of cheap oil for consumers, by dumping two million gallons of
tidy profit for the companies involved ‘Corexit’ into the ocean, a chemical
and luxurious revenue streams for that caused the floating oil to sink.35
state officials.”31
Regardless of this, the intense visibility
Any consideration of fossil fuels of the initial 2010 spill lingers in the
returns us to the ocean. The ocean imagination. The protagonist and
as infrastructure is inseparable from narrator of Tom McCarthy’s novel
fossil fuels. Half of all maritime cargo, Satin Island, ‘U’, is fixated on images
by tonnage, is oil.32 The ocean also of the spill. Sitting in an airport as
acts as a carbon dioxide sink for the story of the spill emerges, he is
the emissions from the burning of unable to look away. As the media
fossil fuels, storing up to one-third of coverage slowly moves to the next
the output of carbon dioxide since story, he continues to watch it, for
the Industrial Revolution.33 While it hours on end, on his laptop. These
invisibly soaks waste from fossil fuel- images invade his consciousness
powered machinery, the ocean has and, dreamlike, he sees oil
also been the site of oil pollution everywhere, recognising that his
via spills. Some of these spills world of contemporary technology,
have been highly visible via their air travel and the atmosphere of
enormous scale, the largest being his existence is drenched in it: “[…]
the Deepwater Horizon disaster in watching the crippled platform
2010.34 While media coverage of listing, the broken pipe gushing, the
this was extensive, Demos argues that birds milling around, the oil-flower
over time the media ultimately aided unfurling its petals, the dark water
false claims around the clean-up. The swelling and cresting, over and
media’s emphasis on visibility and over again. I watched, as I said,
images, rather than data, allows for for hour after hour […]. When I had
little attention to the structural causes finally got airborne, and found
or long-term effects of the spill. my head slumped flat against the
Demos argues that media coverage window as I slipped into flecked
enabled and supported BP’s false and grainy sleep, oil seemed to lie
10around the very cloud patches the a straw being graphically removed
wing-lights were illuminating: to lurk from a turtle’s nose. Analysing this
within and boost their volume, as video, Elspeth Probyn finds within this
though absorbed by them, and to spectacular visibility an essentially
seep out from them as well, in blobs limited conception of the structural
and globules that hovered on their and continuous transformation of
ledges, sat about their folds and waterways via recent human activity,
crevasses, like so many blackened of which single use-straws are a
cherubs.”36 negligible component.40
Oil spreads through the ocean as a In a manner that can be likened to
result of constant accidents and spills aluminium dust traveling through
and, systematically, via the dumping the air, becoming inseparable from
of plastic waste into waterways: ten ‘nature’, so microplastics, outside
percent of all oil, Amanda Boetzkes of visibility, are dispersed through
notes, is used in the production of the ecosystem via waterways and
plastic.37 McNeill and Engelke oceans. This includes microscopic
pinpoint the Norwegian adventurer plastics in the form of dust from
Thor Heyerdahl as initially bringing car tires and fibres entering the
the scale of plastic pollution in the waterways from the laundering of
ocean to wider public awareness synthetic clothes.41 Analysing the
in the early 1970s.38 Kate O’Neill work of Tejal Shah, Boetzkes sees the
notes that, more recently, public inclusion of found footage of a tiny
attention towards plastic in the fish spewing plastic, in one of Shah’s
ocean skyrocketed in 2017-2018. As videos, as a hinge through which
numerous academic and journalistic to interpret the crux of the artist’s
reports on ocean plastic were being work. Boetzkes writes that, in Shah’s
published, this was also the period work, as embodied in this image,
in which China effectively stopped garbage, pollution and waste can
accepting plastic waste for recycling. be understood as a part of both
This policy left millions of tonnes of humans and the planet, incorporated
plastic stranded on ships and ports into and inseparable from life:
globally, giving a brief, newsworthy “noxious debris is the intimate fabric
visuality to plastic waste.39 No doubt, of our habitat; it passes through,
the public concern was also partly a and against the body, conditioning
result of alarming and widely viewed it and giving it form.”42 Oceans and
videos and images, such as one of waterways figure prominently in
1112
recognitions of a world-ecology like collage, can present unexpected
that, in Patel and Moore’s sense of connections that reveal world-
the word, undermines the separation ecologies and undo distinctions
of nature and culture and links between nature and culture. An
materialities across geographies example of this begins with illegal
and lifeforms. An example of this and artisanal gold mining, occurring
is the artwork of Lauren Burrows, mainly in the world’s poorest nations
which considers the effect of which have long been subject to
pharmaceuticals, expelled through colonial exploitation. Here, at great
wastewater, on fish.43 Oceans are personal risk, miners use mercury
key sites for the ‘externalities’, the as part of the extractive process
human and environmental costs of in refining gold. From this, gold
extractive industries. The effects of mining accounts for over one-
such externalities are often hidden third of global mercury pollution.
from visibility due to either the Entering waterways, the mercury
invisible form of the pollution, such moves through the ecosystem and
as microplastic dust or radioactivity, via biomagnification it increases in
or because of the remoteness toxicity as it moves along the food
of the activities, as in deep-sea chain. Eventually, the mercury finds its
mining.44 The ocean is a physical way into the diet of Scandinavians,
site central to the Capitalocene. creating a measurable effect on the
Yet, in its amorphous flows and its neurology of this population.45 While
linkage of disparate discourses and not specifically concerned with
materialities, the ocean is also a this process, Charity Edwards and
metaphorical and philosophical site, Amelia Hine’s work, Death Metal,
with potential for enabling a world- ostensibly about gold, presents the
ecology perspective. tangled connections of this element
across scales of life, technology
Oceans figure prominently in the
and finance. The connection of the
work of Leela Schauble, Marian
post-colonial extraction of gold
Tubbs and Samuel Tupou in this
to the oceanic flows of mercury
exhibition. Here, oceans, within
and the brain functioning of
the web-of-life, are inseparable
Scandinavians is merely one more
from plastics, oil, communication
layer we could add to Edwards’s
networks, and cultures, and present
and Hine’s formulation of gold, as
an opportunity to imagine post-
actor, morphing across aeons and
human futures. The oceans’ flows,
13intersecting with human life for a young man.’ That’s what they used
fleeting moment amidst is distant to say. ‘There’s gold in them thar
pasts and futures. hills’. Now where do we go to get
our gold? The fucking dump.”46 That
Gold is everywhere, from our phones
The Mosquito Coast is produced
to trace elements in human biology.
and distributed by one of the
Edwards and Hine are specifically
leading contributors to electronic
interested in gold, not just for its
obsolescence, Apple, emphasises
material ubiquity, but also for its role
our everyday acceptance of eco-
as a tradeable commodity, where
catastophe, in which our desire
its value sits at the interstice of the
for gold is matched only by our
real and the virtual. Gold’s market
willingness to discard it, as we write
value is tied not just to its physical
our post-human futures.47
use, to supply and demand, but also
to its role as a financial instrument, Samuel Tupou’s work Future Lands
and this value tends to increase as (Old World Rituals) (2017), featured
violent or catastrophic events occur. in Sediment, is part of a series of
As speculative commodity, gold’s works that imagine distant futures.
lustre becomes a harbinger of the The layering of planes within the
apocalypse. work combines diverse sources
and inspiration, including patterns
A consideration of gold’s ‘value’
inspired by traditional ‘tapa’ cloth,
leads us from Wall St to garbage
alongside a palette and stylistic
dumps. With gold intricately
elements that suggests the pixels of
enmeshed in the electronics industry,
videogames and the luminescence
it is inevitably also part of cycles of
of screens. Against the backdrop
waste and constitutes part of the
of a leaking drum, perhaps filled
mountains of technology discarded
with oil or toxic waste, a figure
each day. The recently released
resembling a human-esque Tiki
Apple+ television series, The
sculpture emerges; transformed and
Mosquito Coast (2021), centres
adapted, the figure rises to create a
on Allie Fox, a confident, yet fatally
new story out of this detritus. Here,
flawed, self-styled anti-capitalist.
the subject and the process of the
Leading his son through towering
work coalesces, each reflected in the
hills of garbage, Allie notes the
other, as Tupou states, “Through the
gold stored there in the detritus of
re-invention and repetition of these
electronic consumption: “‘Go west,
discarded remnants, I am attempting
1415
to create new narratives, which of plastic and was a reaction
portray both personal and shared against the smooth, shiny and
histories.”48 Against the residue of seductive world of plastic products
the fossil-fuel industry, life and culture that was beginning to take hold.
are transformed, waiting to be Works such as Burri’s Combustione
reconfigured for alternative futures. Plastica (1964) violently connect
Climate change is particularly urgent plastic to combustion, to the burning
in the Pacific, where the globally of fuel, and can be retroactively
uneven effects of fossil-fuel use are interpreted for their overtones of
manifested and low-lying islands are environmental apocalypse, which
already being adversely affected by we also find in Schauble’s eerily
rising waters.49 calm work.50 The title of the series
presented here, YInMn, refers to a
Leela Schauble’s Synthetic Species
new synthetic blue pigment that has
Motion Study (2012-2015) similarly
been recently commercialised, and
imagines an oil-drenched future. The
which is produced using rare-earth
work animates images of discarded
metals. This seductive, radiant blue
plastic bags to create new species,
is intimately connected to processes
imagining the evolution of our plastic-
of extraction and waste that are
filled oceans. Schauble’s more
transforming the planet.51
recent print works included here,
YInMn, Plastic Island #1-#4 (2021), Marian Tubbs’s my internet and
again engage with discarded ocean twin (2017) is a collaged
plastic. Here, single-use plastic bags image printed onto silk. Here,
float over images of the ocean, amorphous and ambiguous plastic
resembling icebergs, the distinction forms entangle and overlap each
between nature and culture visually other. The form and title suggest
unravels in these portraits of oceanic the merging of the ocean and the
futures. The works connect directly internet as both metaphorical and
to Leela’s other recent series The physical sites for our networks of
Ocean Isn’t Blue (2019), which communication, infrastructure and
presents the ocean wrapped in soft debris. Tubbs’s the sun will eat itself
plastic. These works visually resemble (where Gs go to paradise) (2021)
Alberto Burri’s work from the 1960s, is similarly elusive, but its mix of
in which plastic was stretched over images is more explicitly connected
a frame and burnt. Burri’s work by the ocean and waterways:
draws attention to the disposability images of undersea cables and
1617
18
ocean islands mix with Minecraft- This essay loops across collage,
style underwater environments, waste, oil, plastic, oceans and
cascading waterfalls and climate change, suggesting
abandoned waterparks. The images overlapping, accumulating
slide between the natural and the contexts that intersect with the
synthetic, ultimately undermining this works in Sediment, and the futures
distinction. Traversing the imagery, they imag(in)e. Together, the
a shiny, animated virtual creature works undo the strict separation
moves through the work and gestures of nature and culture, life and
towards a posthuman future of bio- nonlife, and representation and
synthetic evolution, in a manner reality. Demos, perhaps the most
similar to the creatures in Schauble’s visible contemporary historian of
Synthetic Species. ecologically-themed art, criticises
apocalyptic imagery of posthuman
In Schauble’s and Tubbs’s work,
futures for shutting down the
the ocean is both a physical and
imagination of alternative futures.53
metaphorical site for the dissolving
The artists exhibiting in Sediment
of modernist dichotomies. The ocean
share in gestures towards such
and its tumultuous flows, challenge
posthuman futures and apocalyptic
boundaries and life and nonlife
sentiments, yet their use of collage,
are inextricably interwoven. as
of worlds being constructed and
Hessler writes: “seawater infringes
remade, also suggests that these
the modernist paradigm of the
elements can be assembled
retinal, the distant from the body,
alternatively, in a future yet to be
immersing us in the transversal
written.
nexus of particles, compounds and Simone Hine and Kyle Weise
processes of changing aggregates.
It is prone to overflow, it trickles
through our hands, it evaporates. It
is full of living organisms, a messy
reality that is impossible to separate,
garden, groom. If air is filled with
bacteria, water with its connective
materiality, its stickiness, and its
electrical conductivity, overflows
categorizations of life and nonlife.
They dissolve and become one.”52
1920
21
Endnotes An Environmental History of the Anthropo- 1 See, for example: T.J. Demos, Against cene since 1945 (Cambridge, MA: The the Anthropocene: Visual Culture and En- Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, vironment Today (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), p.204). 2017), p.18-21. 6 Demos, Decolonizing Nature, p.58. 2 On this, see, for example: Stephanie 7 Patel and Moore, A History of the Hessler, Prospecting Ocean (Vienna: World in Seven Cheap Things, p.24-25, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary; 38-40, 44-63. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2019), p.40- 8 Demos, Decolonizing Nature, p.52-62, 41; Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore, A His- 116-20. For an example of a contem- tory of the World in Seven Cheap Things: porary artist who combines elements of A Guide to Capitalism, Nature and the restoration and preservation alongside a Future of the Planet (London: Verso, 2018), political ecology approach that recog- p.2-3; Demos, Against the Anthropocene, nises these entanglements, see Amanda p.54, 60, 96-7. Boetzkes’s discussion of Mel Chin’s Revival 3 Demos, Against the Anthropocene, Field (1991-ongoing). While having a p.47. connection to the aesthetics of preserva- 4 Feminism for the 99 Percent: A Mani- tion art, Chin’s work intertwines itself with festo (London: Verso, 2019), p.47. Demos financial and scientific discourses in its looks at the work of Richard Misrach as speculative attempt to develop a plant an example of contemporary art practice that can extract metal from contaminated that considers the disproportionate effect soil, and then be cultivated for its ore. See: of oil’s ‘externalities’ on poor communities, Plastic Capitalism: Contemporary Art though Misrach’s work is limited to a North and the Drive to Waste (Cambridge, MA: American context (Against the Anthropo- MIT Press, 2019), p.84-93.The critique of cene, p.78). the separation of human and the environ- 5 See: T.J Demos, Decolonizing Nature: ment has become a constant of recent art Contemporary Art and the Politics of history with ecological concerns. See, for Ecology (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2016), example, Larissa Hjorth, Sarah Pink, Kristen p.38-45. Demos analyses the work of Sharp, and Linda Williams, Screen Ecolo- Alan Sonfist as an example of this. Though gies: Art, Media and the Environment in the it is politically opposite, we could view the Asia-Pacific Region (Cambridge, MA: MIT preservationist approach as an exten- Press, 2016), p.24-25, 54, 128-29. sion and modification of the historically 9 Patel and Moore, A History of the preceding structure of Western environ- World in Seven Cheap Things, p.14-18, mental awareness which, as J.R McNeill 73-74 and Peter Engelke note, “before 1950 was 10 McNeill and Engelke, The Great an issue mainly for aristocrats and blue Acceleration, p.58-60, 66, 88-90. bloods anxious about birds, game animals, 11 Ibid, p.117, 141-51. and property rights, and typically called 12 Kate O’Neill, Waste (Cambridge: Poli- ‘conservation.’” (The Great Acceleration: ty Press, 2019). See, for example, p. 18-19, 22
53, 96, 176. evident in this exhibition, Sediment.
13 Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: 26 Jussi Parikka, A Geology of Media.
Critical Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, Electronic Mediations 46 (Minneapolis:
1961), p.70, 74. University of Minnesota Press, 2015).
14 Thomas Crow, Modern Art in the 27 Ibid, p.83-108.
Common Culture (New Have: Yale 28 Ibid, p.85-86.
University Press, 1998), p.8; Lisa Florman, 29 Ibid, p.21.
“The Flattening of ‘Collage’” October 102 30 Ibid, p. 99-100. Coal, in particular, is
(2002), p.59. crucial to the production of computers and
15 Hessler, Prospecting Ocean, p.27-28. the maintenance of data servers, as Parik-
16 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, ka, in his typically succinct yet evocative
The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. style, notes: “New media, archaic power.”
Post-Contemporary Interventions. (Durham: (p. 123).
Duke university Press, 1991), p.160-172. 31 McNeill and Engelke, The Great
17 Richard Flood, “Tear Me Apart, One Acceleration, p.19. The authors are writing
Letter at a Time.” Collage: The Unmon- specifically about Oriente and the Niger
umental Picture (London: Merrell; New Delta here. The global South and the
York: New Museum: 2007), p.8. Arctic have become the bearers of much
18 Boetzkes, Plastic Capitalism, p.57. of the ‘externalities’ of resource extraction.
19 Hamish Sawyer, “we need privacy “Sacrifice Zones” are discussed in a
guys here too,” in Marian Tubbs, we need number of contexts throughout McNeill
privacy guys here too. Ed. Dana Kopel and Engelke’s study, such as in relation to
(South Yarra: Art Ink, 2020): 41-51. p.47. nuclear weapons testing (p.165).
20 Hjorth, Pink, Sharp and Williams, 32 Ibid, p.19-20.
Screen Ecologies, p.129. 33 Elspeth Probyn, “Wasting Seas:
21 Ibid, p.42-45. Oceanic Time and Temporalities,” The
22 Avalanche, “Liquid Earth,” Migrant 3 Temporalities of Waste: Out of Sight, Out
(2017): 100-105. of Time. Eds. Fiona Allon, Ruth Barcan and
23 Nicole Starosielski, The Undersea Karma Eddison-Cogan. Routledge Envi-
Network. Signs, Storage, Transmission ronmental Humanities (London: Routledge,
(Durham: Duke university Press, 2015). 2021): 179-91. p.184.
p.16. 34 McNeill and Engelke, The Great
24 Ibid. Acceleration, p.15.
25 Hjorth, Pink, Sharp and Williams also 35 Demos, Against the Anthropocene,
note this trend (Screen Ecologies, p.28). p.32-37.
These authors’ analysis of media art within 36 Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (New
this context notes the irony of the artistic York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), p.12. The spill
use of environmentally damaging technol- is not named, but the description leaves
ogy, and particularly screen technology, little doubt it is Deepwater Horizon.
in work addressing climate change (see, 37 Boetzkes, Plastic Capitalism, p.184. It
for example, p.8-9, 174). This irony is also has been suggested that due to the combi-
23nation of over-fishing and plastic pollution, 314. there will be more plastic than fish in the 44 On the recklessness of nuclear weap- ocean by 2050. Both O’Neill (Waste, ons testing in the Pacific, see: McNeill p.149) and Patel and Moore (History, and Engelke, The Great Acceleration, p.23) cite this alarming hypothesis. Such p.162-63 and Hessler, Prospecting is the ubiquity of plastic that another Ocean, p.199-204. On the new frontiers suggested alternative term to our geologic of deep-sea mining, see Hessler, Pros- era, instead of Anthropocene, is Plasticene pecting Ocean. Hessler also notes that (see Demos, Against the Anthropocene, while plastic floating in the ocean offers a p.95). highly visible and widely circulated image, 38 McNeill and Engelke, The Great invisible threats, including radioactivity Acceleration, p.137-38. and toxins, “capture our imaginations and 39 O’Neill details both the expanded manifest their temporally and spatially public awareness of ocean plastic and distributed effects” (Prospecting Ocean, China’s policy changes towards scrap p.44). Throughout Decolonizing Nature, plastic; see: Waste, p.143, 154-161. Demos is particularly concerned with the 40 Probyn, “Wasting Seas”, 179-80. ‘externalities’ of extractive industries, the Probyn’s analysis is similar to Demos’s true costs of which are never properly aforementioned critique of the cover- reconciled or considered (e.g, p.131, 146, age of the BP spill. In contrast to Probyn, 170, 177, 205). O’Neill notes that while straws represent a 45 Probyn, “Wasting Seas,” p.188-86. tiny fraction of plastic waste in the ocean, 46 The Mosquito Coast, Episode 1, ‘Light by volume, the sheer number of straws Out’ (2021). poses enormous challenges to marine life 47 Relevant here is Sara Cwynar’s Rose (Waste, p.148). Gold (2017) work which, inspired by 41 O’Neill, Waste, p.149. Apple’s Rose Gold iPhone, considers the 42 Boetzkes, Plastic Capitalism, p.123- way such objects are coded with de- 25. The footage used by Shah is from sires that inevitably fade. Cwynar’s work David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series. is also shaped by a collage aesthetic. The literalisation of this intimacy between See, https://saracwynar.com/works/ the organic and synthetic can be found in rose-gold-exhibition. recent research around mealworms that 48 Samuel Tupou, Artist Statement. can digest plastic, see for example: Tom In, Site Seer catalogue (Brisbane: Page, “Could Unlocking the Mystery of the Onespace, 2017), p.4. . 49 Angela Tiatia has produced a number 43 On this work, see: Helen Hughes, of powerful video works that consider the “Lauren Burrow.” Artforum (Summer 2019): effect of climate change on Pacific islands, 24
including Holding On (2015) and Tuvalu Images
(2016).
50 On Burri’s Combustione Plastica work, Cover: Marian Tubbs, my internet and
see: Boetzkes, Plastic Capitalism, p.68-70. ocean twin, 2017. Pigment print on silk,
For further details on Burri’s Combustio- 100 x 75 cm. Installation View, Metro Arts.
ne Plastica (1964), see: https://www. Courtesy the artist and STATION.
centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/oeu- Page 4: Leela Schauble, YInMn Ocean,
vre/cByXao. Schauble’s The Ocean Isn’t Plastic Island #3, 2021. Inkjet print on
Blue (2019) works are documented on smooth pearl. 30cm x 40cm. Ed. of 15.
her website: https://www.leelaschauble. Page 7: Marian Tubbs, the sun will eat
com/the-ocean-isnt-blue. itself (where Gs go to paradise), 2021,
51 Notably, blue is a colour emphasised Video Stills. Courtesy the artist and
in marketing due to its apparent ability STATION.
to attract human attention and thus to Page 12: Charity Edwards and
facilitate the evocation of consumerist Amelia Hine, Death Metal, HD Video,
desire. This was explored in Jessica Curry’s 3min35sec. Video Still, Detail.
exhibition Don’t look for too long lest you Page 15: Samuel Tupou, Future Lands
see the gloss (Kuiper Projects, Brisbane, (Old World Rituals), 2017. Acrylic and
2018). serigraph on board. 86cm x 86cm.
52 Hessler, Prospecting Ocean, p.217. Installation View, Metro Arts. Courtesy the
53 Demos, Decolonizing Nature, p.245. artist and Onespace Gallery.
Demos is drawing directly on the writing of Page 17: Leela Schauble, Synthetic
Naomi Klein in this assertion. Species Motion Study, 2012-2015. HD
Video, 8min5sec. Video Still.
Page 18: Marian Tubbs, the sun will
eat itself (where Gs go to paradise),
2021, Video Stills. Courtesy the artist and
STATION.
Page 20-21: Sediment. Installation Views,
Metro Arts.
Page 26: Marian Tubbs, the sun will eat
itself (where Gs go to paradise), 2021.
Installation View, Metro Arts. Courtesy the
artist and STATION.
2526
List of Works
Clockwise left to right from gallery
entrance:
Marian Tubbs, the sun will eat itself
(where Gs go to paradise), 2021.
Digital video with sound, 6min1sec.
Edition of 3 + 2AP. Courtesy the artist
and STATION.
Charity Edwards and Amelia Hine,
Death Metal, HD Video, 3min35sec.
Marian Tubbs, my internet and ocean
twin, 2017. Pigment print on silk, 100
x 75 cm. Courtesy the artist and
STATION.
Leela Schauble, YInMn Ocean, Plastic
Island #1, 2021. Inkjet print on smooth
pearl. 30cm x 40cm. Ed. of 15.
Leela Schauble, YInMn Ocean, Plastic
Island #2, 2021. Inkjet print on smooth
pearl. 30cm x 40cm. Ed. of 15.
Leela Schauble, YInMn Ocean, Plastic
Island #3, 2021. Inkjet print on smooth
pearl. 30cm x 40cm. Ed. of 15.
Leela Schauble, YInMn Ocean, Plastic
Island #4, 2021. Inkjet print on smooth
pearl. 30cm x 40cm. Ed. of 15.
Leela Schauble, Synthetic Species
Motion Study, 2012-2015. HD Video,
8min5sec.
Samuel Tupou, Future Lands (Old
World Rituals), 2017. Acrylic and
serigraph on board. 86cm x 86cm.
Courtesy the artist and Onespace
Gallery.
27Jo Thomas
Creative Director + CEO
Kyle Weise
Curator (Exhibition Program)
metroarts.com.au
97 Boundary Street, West End, Brisbane Qld 4000
(07) 3002 7100
info@metroarts.com.au
Metro Arts and the artist acknowledge the Jagera and Turrbal peoples, as the custodians of this land,
recognising their connection to land, waters and community. We honour the story-telling and art-mak-
ing at the heart of First Nations’ cultures, and the enrichment it gives to the lives of all Australians.You can also read
