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MELTdown

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Almost this time last year I was wandering along abandoned streets of Chernobyl, feeling ironically closer to nature here than anywhere I had ever stepped foot. A week later I was in Iceland, trekking along a black beach at dawn, chasing icebergs crashing at the shore. Last night was the opening of meltdown, a solo exhibition, part of my masters at SCA, featuring works from this wild adventure into the radioactive zone of Chernobyl and the melting landscape of Iceland. Two video projections suspended in space, floating far from home, at SCA Grad gallery. It’s open until the 26th July, pop by if you can. I hope to continue exploring meltdowns throughout the world, and expand this body of work indefinitely.

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SCA Sydney College of the Arts
SCA Grad Gallery
Callan Park
Darling St, Rozelle

Here are some photos, I may put the videos up once the show is complete.

Chernobyl, Ukraine

After reading Visit Sunny Chernobyl by Andrew Blackwell, there was no question. Forget Fiji, my next destination holiday was the world’s second most radioactive site on the planet. Chernobyl. Four months later, there I was following wolf tracks, driving along roads once lined with rustic houses, now gone, replaced by trees and wildlife, in one of the most stunning and peaceful places on Earth. Ironically, Chernobyl has become a sanctuary for wildlife throughout Europe and Asia, as their habitats are destroyed, they take refuge in this ‘dead zone,’ abandoned 25 years ago by humans after a huge nuclear explosion. For two days I wandered across radioactive ground, exploring a world at once frozen, poised in time, and yet now bursting with preternatural life. Walking through The Zone, it a contradiction the mind cannot unravel. A radioactive land second only to Fukushima, flourishing with pre-industrial levels of wildlife. The dosimeter declares in loud beeps that where I stand is deadly. The flowers, trees, birds and wildlife surrounding dance to a different beat.

The video on display at SCA is of an abandoned street in Chernobyl, framed by giant trees alive with movement. The wind in this video picks up the political, cultural and environmental turmoil surrounding Chernobyl, blows it down the abandoned avenue, and then, purposefully looped, these quandaries swoop back toward the camera, and the viewer, trapped in a tragic waltz of charged energy.

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Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, Iceland

After Chernobyl I travelled to Iceland. It was so beautiful. Too beautiful. Unlike Chernobyl, I barely lifted my camera. The divide between nature came to a head with what Suzi Gablik would describe as the ‘disembodied eye.’ There was a great divide between myself and this utopian landscape. After a few days, a loneliness and yearning started to pull at me. Within this grand landscape there were echoes of my time in Chernobyl. Another land at first glance untouched by man and modernity. But, as I stopped, there was a sound that had been following me, almost imperceivable, dwarfed by the piercing silence. This sound was the sound of melting. Everywhere. At first a small trickle, it became a constant allegorical reminder of our distant actions and lifestyles slowly melting away these arctic caps.

The video displayed at SCA is an abstract of these ecological issues. Underneath this calm reverie, a visceral shift occurs when this static image, this static landscape jerks back to it’s original place as the video loops, a reminder, that this is not merely a romantic mirror of this resplendent landscape, but a moving, melting scape disappearing before our eyes.

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