Earth Eaters at Hoxton 253 art project space brings together evocative artworks to ask what is at stake in the climate crisis and will humankind heed the warnings of impending doom?
An ecological art exhibition is set to bring worms, soil, scent installations and a bog into a Hoxton art space.
Petrichor - the smell of rain on parched soil - will waft through Hoxton 253 Art Project Space later this month as part of the Earth Eaters group show.
It’s one of 30 paintings, sculptures, videos and installations by 18 artists which challenge the conventional world view of humans as the superior species, and question what is at stake in the climate crisis of the 21st century.
The term earth eaters is an alternative for the condition ‘geophagia’ the practice in humans and animals of eating earth for its clay and mineral content.
The exhibition explores soil’s potential role in preventing climate change as well as using it as an artistic medium to highlight a vital substance we often take for granted.
Exhibits include William York’s half excavated skeleton Look at Us Now which asks “what would our ancestors think of the way we treat the planet today?”
Charly Blackburn’s ceramic artwork ‘The Diamond Chips Thought It Was Possible, explores the violence inherent within the extreme heat and pressure of deep sea mining, while Tasha Marks’ installation recreates the evocative aroma of geosmin, a chemical created by the bacteria found in soil, released by summer rain.
Byzantia Harlow’s Psilocybin (The Sediments of Sentiments), is a work in bronze, jesmonite, ceramics, earth, soil, dried vegetation and “various crystals hand crushed during a full moon ritual to aid intuition”.
It’s part of her current work and interest in the natural and supra-natural, the spiritual, and unconventional healing practices.
Russell Webb’s The Dance is made from wood, sawdust and PVA, and depicts “familiar yet unknowable” earthworms.
Hermaphrodites who breathe through their skin and have no face, eyes, nose or teeth, they play a vital role in feeding on decaying matter and converting it into soil.
Soil as long term storage of carbon is explored in Timo KUbe’s ‘studio bog’.
Made from pond soil, clay, peat and flint, he leaves it to bubble away in a cycle of growth and decay as unicellular and multicellular life such as water fleas and algae develop.
And Natasha Bird uses paper pulped from commuters’ newspapers to create new forms which peel back the layers of the city “revealed as a body, where the landscape rebels against the desire for seamless production and consumption”.
Exploring relationships between philosophy and nature, the personal and the political, destruction and construction, Earth Eaters runs from September 25 to October 4 with an opening night on the 24th September at Hoxton 253 Art Project Space in Hoxton Street, N1.
The exhibition is curated by Cole Projects www.coleprojects.co.uk
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