EXHIBITION AND BOOK LAUNCH

JAMES BECKETT
“Passionate Advocate for a Poisoned Earth”
4 March – 4 June, 2013

The exhibition takes its title from an IHT book review of the biography of environmentalist Rachel Carson. In her book Silent Spring (1962), Carson addressed the indiscriminate use of pesticides, which she artfully linked to radioactive fallout in order to raise awareness about the changing practices of industrial agriculture. Both pesticides and fallout were invisible, acutely toxic, mutagenic and had effects that could last for generations. The main chemical singled out by Carson was DDT; the book subsequently resulted in its being banned in   the U.S.

The artworks developed for this exhibition explore the potentialmystical properties of the chemical, in an environment of historical dioramas with as much documentative credibility as fantasy. To elaborate: in the process of gathering archival photographs for the works, strange parallels began toarise between the media aesthetics of the period in the banning of DDT, andthat of the Prohibition Era. The works are therefore developed with this sensibility in mind: if the chemical DDT was a focus of such strong negative attention, it must be good for something – perhaps as a form of inebriation.*

Expanding molecular models turn into fumes that emanate from laboratory bottles, whilst a huge cross bearing bronze renderings of Carsonspins in the background. A constellation of propped and fallen books forms a maquette and becomes an extract from Stonehenge, a gesture which suggests Silent Spring to be a moment of evolution, now only token and shelved.

*The ‘Mickey Slim’ was a drink that had short-lived popularity in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. According to the The Dedalus Book of Absinthe by Phil Baker, it was made by combining gin with a pinch of DDT (also known as dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).

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