Henry J Fair: 'Artefakte’ Exhibition, Museum für Naturkunde
Inspiring my practice, photographer and environmental activist Henry J Fair combines beauty and expressiveness with destitution and industrialisation. Employing vivid colours and tonal contrasts, Fair’s ambiguous compositions adopt an uneasy double life, exemplifying potent records of environmental pollution. Large-scale in format, Fair echoes the catastrophic and monumental affects human activity has on the natural and unspoilt.
Natural History Museum Berlin, Henry Fair Artefakte Exhibition ‘(2019)
His exhibition ‘Artefakte’, includes a multitude of bird’s-eye view images of industrial areas, toxic waste deposits, and coal mines; achieved by flying across the industrialised stretch of the Mississippi River, Cancer Alley. Although eye-catching and alluring, the chaotic formation of these manmade, industrial colours represents environmental alarm. This ‘Aesthetic beauty’ highlights the environmental issues that come with our contemporary consumerist society and commercial world.
Fairs exhibited photos were displayed on opposing walls, positioned behind and next to each other. This unusual staging creates an interactive space; triggering and encouraging ongoing dialogue on our carbon footprint between visitors, scientists and environmental experts. This made me consider a lateral presentation when displaying my organic, ecofeminist paintings. Viewed in this horizontal manner creates a metaphorical botanical dialogue linking paint to viscera and body to botanical.
Henry J Fair ‘Top of Oil Tank at Tar Sands Refinery’ Fort McMurray Canada (2017)