Curator: Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee
Reflecting on how humanity connects and is connected to the ecology of our planet is a key tool in reshaping how we think about our impact on it. With climate change and the collapse of ecosystems across the world threatening our very existence, it has never been a better time than now to return to an integrated and entwined relationship with nature.
Acclaimed Emergence Magazine presents a new immersive exhibition in the Bargehouse of Oxo Tower Wharf in London. Entitled Shifting Landscapes, this multi-storied collection of cutting-edge art exemplifies how multiple mediums can further connect an audience with the environments that we are so detached from. This exhibition is accompanied by Emergence Magazine’s fourth edition but also collects many of the company’s award-winning films on display.
Curated by founder Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Shifting Landscapes is about as well-constructed an exhibition as you are likely to witness. Sprawling across the industrial complex of the Bargehouse, each room and section paints a different artist, culture or individual’s relationship with nature – how it can sustain and how it can be torn away.
Photography and film welcome the viewer on the first few floors. Such as the short film Lost World by Kalyanee Mam, which beautifully chronicles a Cambodian fisherwoman’s anguish at the Singaporean dredging of their mangroves. Zied Ben Romdhane’s photos of the effects of wildfires, floods and desertification stuns in sombre black and white. Gheorghe Popa’s Poisoned Beauty series of aerial photographs immaculately captures toxic sludge pollution of a valley in Romania, creating unreal alien landscapes.
Immersion begins on the upper floors. The virtual reality experience Sanctuaries of Silence invites participants to don VR goggles and sit amongst blooming, canvas toadstools. Within the virtual world, you follow acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton as he explores the intricacies of noise pollution that plague the untouched wildernesses of America. On the same floor, a sonic experience created by Vaughan-Lee immerses the spectator into a crisp forest, complete with grass floor and scattered leaves, all in the service of listening to the call of the endangered nightingales. Although simple in its design, this experience can prove eerie and effective.
The crowning moment in Shifting Landscapes is Marshmallow Laser Feast’s Breathing with the Forest. A binaural recreation of the pure sound of the forest contained within the cold attic of the Bargehouse, this experience, accompanied by a digitally created triptych of the forest floor above and below, weaves together all of the threads that this exhibition has been trying to express. Tying together the visual through film and photography with sensorial experiences intends to manifest an appreciation and mindfulness for all the facets of the environment that we often forget and take for granted.
Standing as a constant reminder of our binding entanglement with nature, Shifting Landscapes is a must-see audio-visual storytelling experience.
Runs until 10 December 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Tying humanity to nature.
