"We Will Find Salvation in Strategic Chemical Spills" Talk with Colin Lyons
We will find salvation in strategic chemical spills:
As part of the Climate Art & Action Incubator, Colin Lyons will discuss several recent projects which have brought him to sacrificial landscapes such as tailing piles, decommissioned landfills, historic flood infrastructure, remote islands, and urban brownfields, to develop contingency plans for the post-extraction landscapes we leave behind. Fusing printmaking, installation, and chemical experiments, Lyons' work considers post-industrial landscapes through the lens of geoengineering, extraction, alchemy, and brownfield rehabilitation, employing the chemistry of etching as a re-enactment of boom-and-bust extractive cycles. These prototypes weave together speculative climate engineering trials to desalinate arctic waters, phyto-remediate contaminated soils using invasive plant species, and fertilize coastal ecosystems using dissolved industrial artifacts. However, instead of practical climate solutions, these bubbling, self-destructive systems embrace humor, futility, and feedback-loops, laying bare the folly of our desire to find salvation in the fine balance of strategic chemical spills, and proposing rituals which blend the sacred and scientific to question what kind of nature we hope to approximate within a techno-solutionist future. Through these rituals, Lyons explores the possibilities for transmutation beyond the natural life-cycle of the printmaking matrix, and seeks to use the etching process to compress historical and geological time; connecting the threads of our legacy of extraction to the dystopian but perhaps inevitable climate-engineering “solutions” on our horizon.
After the talk, there will be group activities and discussions facilitated by the artist.
Bio:
Colin Lyons grew up in the birthplace of the North American oil industry, Petrolia, Ontario; an experience that has fueled his interests in sacrificial extraction landscapes. Lyons received his BFA from Mount Allison University (2007) and MFA in printmaking from University of Alberta (2012). His most recent site-based installations have been located in sacrificial landscapes such as tailing piles, decommissioned landfills, historic flood infrastructure, urban brownfields, and remote islands. In recent years, Lyons has participated in residency programs at The Arctic Circle (Longyearbyen, Svalbard), ÖRES (Örö Island, Finland), MacDowell (Peterborough, NH), Frans Masereel Centrum (Kasterlee, Belgium), Rabbit Island (Lake Superior), The Grant Wood Fellowship (The University of Iowa), Klondike Institute of Art & Culture (Dawson City, Yukon), and Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, California). His ongoing solo project, We will find salvation in strategic chemical spills has been shown in solo exhibitions in 2023 at Galleria Ratamo (Jyväskylä, Finland), Mesaros Gallery (West Virginia University), and Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery (Davie, FL). His work has also been included in recent group exhibitions at International Print Center New York, Krakow International Print Triennial, International, Printmaking Biennial Douro, International Print Biennial Yerevan, Platform Stockholm, Museum London, and The Soap Factory, among others. Lyons currently lives in Binghamton, NY, where he is an assistant professor at Binghamton University. His website is www.colinlyons.ca.