What Lies Beneath

What Lies Beneath brings together two bodies of work concerned with the sea and its depths as a canvas for the imagination, with collaboration and collision leading to something entirely unforeseen.

Zoe Childerley explores the narrative potential of photography in relation to its abstract capacities, and includes drawing, text, and mapping as part of her practice. She is interested in landscape, the concept of wilderness, demonstrating a desire to experience the ‘sublime’ with the inexplicable seduction of the abyss.

In Beneath the Waves she explores our complicated relationship with the sea using diagrams and text alongside expansive seascapes and underwater exploration to discover the history, ecology and culture of the water's edge. This work considers our position by the sea, a permeable yet immense barrier, a portal to the rest of the world. The impossible geometry drawing reflects the unfathomable depths of the sea. We see how the celestial bodies keep our waters moving and consider the wartime architecture still surveying the surface and the horizon.

Holly Birtles examines locations along the Essex side of the Thames Estuary, envisioning a musical production that articulates the sacred and tragic tales of the estuary, juxtaposed with its ecological trauma. Birtles' multi-disciplinary practice encompasses prop production, performance, and both analogue and digital photographic processes. She incorporates performance documentation, re-appropriation, AI-generated imagery, and self-portraiture to create collaborative responses to selected estuary locations.

In her project Mud Monsters, Birtles inputs large and medium format documentation of constructed performances into the artificial intelligence program MidJourney. This process removes optical requirements, creating mystified and monstrous fictional species. Multiple versions are reworked via Mid Journey’s dataset, whilst Birtles manipulates these images though her own range of dark room techniques; embracing new and established methods of reproduction.

Birtles and Childerley explore optical paradigms and artificial intelligence to manifest ambiguous life forms. They use in-camera techniques, silver gelatin print experimentation, and interact with the AI program MidJourney. Together, they navigate the intersection of the known and unknown through diverse photographic and production techniques, often sharing imagery that informs collaborative prints.