Curator’s Tour in the Exhibition Haunted Ecologies

As part of the London Rivers Week, Stanley Picker Gallery Curator Borbála Soós will lead a free lunchtime tour in the current exhibition Haunted Ecologies by artist Thomas Pausz. Thomas Pausz was appointed a Stanley Picker Fellow in Art and Design in 2022.

The Stanley Picker Gallery is situated on an island along the Hogsmill River, a tributary of the Thames whose riverbank flora is immortalised in John Everett Millais’ famous painting of Ophelia. The exhibition Haunted Ecologies presents a collection of works inspired by the ecology of the surrounding river. The installation echoes the transformations of the river over time and traces how, from Eadweard Muybridge’s landscape photography to contemporary digital image making techniques, the media constellations we design are evolving with and changing our perception of the ecosystem.

As a chalk stream, the Hogsmill River has an increasingly endangered ecology due to excessive extraction of water and increasing sewer discharge. This influx of sewage water on the one hand radically raises the nutrient level of the river, benefitting certain plants and hence causing changes in biodiversity, on the other it also introduces a large variety of harmful polluting substances.