Jesse Andrewartha, Uraninite, Blue Lizard Mine, Utah, 2019, uranotype print, 38.1 x 38.1 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Uraninite, Inter-River Region, San Juan County, Utah, 2019, uranotype print, 38.1 x 38.1 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Anonymous, Happy Jack Mine, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Some of the happiest and best times of my life, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist
Jesse Andrewartha, 10,080 counts per minute, Happy Jack Mine, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Charlie Steen's Mi Vida, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Klee Benally, Indigenous anarchist, anti-uranium activist, 2019, platinum palladium print, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Uraninite, Blue Lizard Mine, Utah, 2019, uranotype print, 38.1 x 38.1 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Uraninite, Inter-River Region, San Juan County, Utah, 2019, uranotype print, 38.1 x 38.1 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Anonymous, Happy Jack Mine, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Some of the happiest and best times of my life, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist
Jesse Andrewartha, 10,080 counts per minute, Happy Jack Mine, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Charlie Steen's Mi Vida, 2019, platinum/palladium print from original negative, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Jesse Andrewartha, Klee Benally, Indigenous anarchist, anti-uranium activist, 2019, platinum palladium print, 20.32 x 50.8 cm. Courtesy of the artist.
Selected
Transmutations: Visualizing Matter | Materializing Vision
Postponed
Please note that this exhibition is postponed until further notice to ensure the health and safety of our community and to flatten the curve of COVID-19.
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I have long been fascinated with the power of photography to illuminate the intersection of humanity and the physical world and more broadly, a deeper realization that human-material practices move toward self-annihilation. Transmutations: Visualizing Matter | Materializing Vision is a unique media arts exhibition using autoradiography (images created by the “light” of radioactive materials), uranotype, 35mm film, and digital video to investigate how images condition material practices and how matter conditions both imaging and imagination.
A postgraduate in scientific photography, I am interested in how the unique photographic capacities of uranium, combined with associations of the geopolitical history in which it is entangled, can illuminate the agency of matter as a matter of urgency in our changing geopolitical reality. To explore this, this exhibition has two components: an ultra-large format platinotype series documenting uranium mines throughout North America and a hybrid black-and-white 35mm/HD video documentary film. My approach is to mix digital video and analogue film formats to draw out the textural qualities and material implications of each, reflecting the connection between the viewer and the materiality of the work. But I will take this approach one step further. The exhibition features uranotypes (hand coated images made with photosensitive uranium salts) of historical uranium samples from mines documented. Thus the metal itself forms a permanent, radioactive image, a vibrant index of the specimens photographed that no current digital technology can replicate.
Exhibiting the work as an immersive experience, I hope to help audiences form an image of material vibrancy that speaks not only to the dangers of nuclear escalation that seems beyond the experience of the general public, but also to the dangers of a cultural imaginary without images adequate to the task of conveying the force of matter in all human-material practices.
