Jane and Louise Wilson

Jane and Louise Wilson

Bringing together recent works by the acclaimed British artists Jane and Louise Wilson, this exhibition features the world premiere of their new film The Toxic Camera alongside Atomgrad (Nature Abhors a Vacuum).

Atomgrad is a suite of large-scale photographs, depicting deserted interiors from the now almost entirely abandoned city of Pripyat, situated within the 30km wide exclusion zone around the former nuclear power station. The richly textured images of public spaces include a kindergarten, cinema and a swimming pool, all of which explicitly reveal years of decay and the hurried nature of their abandonment.

The Toxic Camera reflects on the disaster and is inspired by the film Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks made by Soviet filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko in the days immediately following the accident.

The Wilsons’ film explores interconnecting stories from interviews conducted with Chernobyl ‘veterans’ and with Shevchenko’s film crew, 25 years after the incident. The narrative includes the story of the camera that Shevchenko used which became so highly radioactive that it was subsequently buried on the outskirts of Kiev. The film is a reflection on the material nature of film and considers the human impact of the disasters in Chernobyl and the more recent explosion in Fukushima.