Mattia Balsamini, Stephanie Wynne and Melanie King have a gallery each at Open Eye until September. Their work for LOOK Photo Biennial uses photography as a base, a method, and an outcome.
At each stage of their process, the three artists have explored essential contemporary questions of our species’ effect on the planet. It’s not a sermon, and there’s little contextual lead-in, because there doesn’t have to be. There shouldn’t have to be.
We’re past the point of having to tell people our world is in danger. Other than the few still sadly influenced by twisted science funded by an industry its outcome protects, the majority of the world now understands the risks of not reversing human impact on the earth.
These exhibitions, instead of just telling us our actions are bad, actually look at the tools for change. In some cases, that’s going to be urban planning, in others, it’s about understanding how to mitigate the overlooked remnants of war.
Mattia Balsamini’s exhibition, ‘Protege Noctem’ (Protect the Night), explores not just the impact of light pollution on wildlife, but on humans too. That our actions are actively and immediately impacting on us is terrifying, but there are things being done to fix it. The exhibition looks at the reasons it needs fixing, but also the tools we have for change. It’s hopeful, and beautifully brought together.
Some of the work documented in Mattia’s exhibition is working. Others aren’t. One image documents Ewo’s laboratory in South Tyrol, Austria, who are experimenting with soft light for public spaces that does not harm the dark. To date, their directional lighting has changed how humans are able to navigate at night, bringing light pollution to a minimum across several new major developments, city centres, and rural roads. In the future, their experiments may well restore the night sky to Earth.
But not everything is working. Balsamini’s other images include an image of Hong Kong at night, a city that is one thousand two hundred times brighter than the surrounding countryside. Despite proposals to turn off unnecessary and unused lights during the night, no change has been affected at all, and none looks likely in the near future.
And within those contextualising sites, sits the stories of the life impacted by it: wolves in Germany who have developed forms of breast cancer, prostate cancer and skin cancer related to artificial light exposure; moths, tiring themselves out based not on street lamps, but on the excessive changes in light pollution from satellites crossing the sky.
Stephanie Wynne looks at erosion, or ‘The Erosion’ as the north end of Crosby Beach is affectionately known. This part of Merseyside has been explored by most of us at some point, thanks to its seemingly limitless store of local history, brickwork, carved masonry and steel from pre-war Liverpool, that now just sits, and erodes, corrodes, into sand.
But as the photographer says, this site isn’t only of interest because of its historical context. There is present and future science to be done, with both negative and positive impacts on wildlife as a result of the disposal of these materials on this specific beach.
Alongside picturesque weathering bricks, sits asbestos, radioactive tin slag, and countless plastic remnants. Some deliberately placed to divert the River Alt. But from this comes life.
Somehow, through the alkaline building rubble, and radioactive waste, life finds a way.
Rare marine lifeforms, and Australian plant species, have found a niche where they can thrive. And much of the waste, even some modern beach plastic, has been turned into creative works by local artists; removing it from the beach, and keeping it permanently out of landfill.
It’s that final spirit of reuse, mentioned by Stephanie Wynne, that leads so perfectly to the final stage of this exhibition, which I suppose is where the healing might begin.
Melanie King’s ‘Precious Metals’ is utterly fascinating. It’s an experiment in material science, and a statement on the life and usefulness of spent goods. Silver plating isn’t new, and it’s usually not considered a particularly sustainable way of making jewellery. But Melanie King does something I’ve not seen before. The silver from used photographic fixative is reclaimed through electrolysis, to plate pieces of jewellery.
The process of silver-gelatine photographic prints is shared in microscopic detail, as a film created with the late Dr Simon Park from the University of Surrey, displays images and video of the crystallisation of silver nitrate responding to light.
These materials, precious metals, are rarely thought of as disposable so it is truly beautiful to see them being treated with this level of respect, and in these rare instances where they find themselves disposed of, used instead.
Even without sharing this process, Melanie King’s platinum-palladium prints of supernovas and nebulae, exploring the cosmic origin of the invaluable materials we disregard as merely ‘precious’ metals are powerful and breathtakingly beautiful.
From start to finish, Beyond Sight, the headline act of this year’s LOOK Photo Biennial, is a tour of impacts, causes, and solutions through the eyes of artists. It’s unique, and it’s educational, but none of that gets in the way of the strength and charm of this work.
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LOOK Photo Biennial: Beyond Sight is open at Open Eye Gallery until 1st September 2024
Find out more at www.openeye.org.uk
Words, Patrick Kirk-Smith