Why do some thoughts stick with you? They glue themselves to your train of thought and cycle back around, radiating a sense of urgency for week after week. Usually, you don’t expect it. The thought comes and goes, barely registering until you realise you’ve made a (possibly unintentional) major life decision based on something you’d kind of forgot happened.
And sometimes at the moment that idea secretes itself, it’s plainly obvious it’s going to have that impact.
There are a fair few exhibitions included in this month’s issue, that have longer runs that usual. So thankfully, for once, we’re not talking about things that won’t be here when you read this, meaning you can go and visit these shows, and maybe understand what I’m waffling about.
In this case, it’s Melanie King’s interdisciplinary work at Open Eye Gallery, which is open until 1st September in gallery 3. The approach of this installation is experimentally practice shifting, and offers a gentle introduction to the science and rationale behind the process.
The results (platinum-palladium prints of cosmic objects and events) are spectacularly beautiful, and created from the elements that those sorts of events are responsible for.
It’s magical for that alone.
But these materials, potential pollutants, are often lost as a result of the process of creating such prints. Here they are celebrated. Immediately opposite is a vitrine, filled with silver-plated jewellery. The silver, saved through electrolysis from the photographic fixative, is rescued from becoming a waste material. This precious metal is now more precious. The jewellery it plates is invaluable. An artwork. A legacy of cosmic donations to the elemental soup that our planet is built from.
Every part of the display is magical, but it’s not the relationship to the cosmic that I know will keep bouncing back at me. It’s how powerfully this new sustainable practice has influenced Melanie King’s work.
Rethinking material sustainability hasn’t just reorganised her process, it’s revolutionised her practice.
Now, for the next few months I’ll be stewing in this resonant thought. It might lead to direct action, or obvious change, or it might manifest more subtly. I don’t know yet. But, instead of just secreting itself quietly in my subconscious, this thought is here, glaringly, blindingly, obvious. I just need to use this energy for something good now.
[there’s a full review of Look Photo Biennial: Beyond Sight later in this paper]