Join us for the Private View on Friday 19 April, 6 to 8pm

Exhibition Open : Friday 19 to Sunday 21 April, 12 noon to 4pm

Exhibition Open by Appointment: Monday 22 to Wednesday 24 April - please arrange by contacting Melanie King on melaniekk88@gmail.com

As part of Across Landscapes Exhibition, Jess Holdengarde and Melanie King have come together to provide an exciting spring weekend workshop on natural-based developers for analogue film processing - find out more and book your place HERE

Across the Landscape is a collaborative exhibition between Ramsgate based artist and TMS Fellow Melanie King and Glasgow based artist Jess Holdengarde.

The show is a collection of natural based explorations that have culminated from the two artists sharing, exploring and building upon their existing sustainable practices with one another.

Through conversation, knowledge exchange and collaborative practice, Jess and Melanie’s work has weaved together new and undeveloped plant-based recipes for analogue processing, printing and toning. Coming together, through the landscapes of Scotland, England and the Outer Hebrides, Melanie and Jess present a series of new and existing work.

Jess will exhibit some of her ongoing investigations from her current project, The Natural Process, alongside a series of ongoing investigations into analogue sound, printing, processing and moving image works.

Melanie will exhibit several artworks and projects produced in a range of landscapes, responding to the environment using sustainable photography processes. These projects include Acquaintance and Submerged Landscapes.

Jess’s project, The Natural Process, is a newly funded research and development project which explores the ethics of foraging, growing & harvesting local plant matter to brew, develop and test a collection of plant-based chemistry for analogue developers. The project has a specific focus on developing plant-based recipes from local landscapes & local plant matter available within Scotland.

Melanie’s project Acquaintance explored the creative possibilities of botanical cyanotype toning and sustainable photographic processes. This exploration considers how location-specific sustainable photographic processes can produce bodies of work that are materially connected to the landscape. Melanie’s research includes her project, Submerged Landscapes. According to the Climate Central app , developed by Climate Scientists, Thanet, UK is likely to become an island again within the next decade. Submerged Landscapes is an ongoing project where Melanie documented the affected areas before they are submerged, using the materiality of the sea within the production of the work.

The exhibition demonstrates how it is possible to produce works that are intrinsically and materially connected to the landscape and to one another's processes. Through conversations, sustainable processes, methodologies and queer lenses of thought, Melanie and Jess give us an insight into the more-than-human experience.

“ We see this show as a series of glimmers into the intertwined, connected and sustainable methods of working as lens-based artists in an ecological crisis and we hope it encourages the ongoing  dialogue around the future of analogue practices”

This exhibition has been supported by Creative Scotland, Arts Council England, Curatorspace, Canterbury Christ Church University and Patreon subscribers.

As part of Across The Landscape Exhibition, Jess Holdengarde and Melanie King will come together to provide an exciting spring weekend workshop on natural-based developers for analogue film processing on Saturday 20 and Sunday 21 April 2024.

Melanie King

Jess Holdengarde