ARTISTS
CAMILO PARRA
Underlying Waters is a series on paper printed with images of Mars captured by the Curiosity Robot and overlaid with watermarks sourced from various bodies of water around the world: rivers from Alaska, snow from Montreal, rain from Bogota, seas from Mexico and France, among others. These pieces explore the condition of water as a principle of life on both Earth and Mars, contrasting the macro representation of these transformed images with water’s micro residue and mineral composition.
With The Absent Referent, Camilo folds inward. Confronted by a personal journey with an undiagnosed illness, he draws inspiration from the microscopic world, delving into the depths of his internal organs for answers. Despite the change of scenery, he remains faithful to yielding abstract landscapes from unseen living ecosystems. Camilo's work appears to aim at seizing these unseen worlds, striving to unravel and comprehend their hidden complexities. Viewing the human body as a continuous process, from microbes to the vast universe, Camilo highlights the interconnectedness of all things.
Camilo Parra describes his art practice as an exploration of “primordial soups”, a concept that lends its name to this exhibition. By examining the visual constructions of outer space and the inner workings of the human body, moving from the macro to the micro with no in-between, he crafts abstract, palpitating worlds from all those unseen territories that escape our immediate reality, shaping a landscape where science and imagination converge. His abstractions exist on the threshold of stillness and tension, teetering on the brink of boiling. Parra’s worlds are made from the same fundamental matter, much like a primordial soup, with compounds intermingled, creating an electric atmosphere brimming with potential.
IMAGE: Underlying Waters of Underdeveloped Landscapes, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.
TESSA SILVA
Since 2015, Tessa Silva has been developing the Feminised Protein project, a material investigation utilising surplus skimmed milk from a small, organic dairy farm in Sussex. She created a unique sculpting material inspired by a 14th-century formula, originally used to lay flooring in Tudor houses, and made from repurposed surplus milk and chalk from the Dover cliffs.
Her sculptural pieces, cast in handmade fabric moulds reminiscent of traditional cheese-making processes, embody biomorphic abstractions that evoke soft, organic forms. There is a supple and feminine quality to her work. Silva seems to render soft flesh in a form completely divorced from the context of bodily shapes, yet they evoke an eerie, uncanny human presence.
These pieces stand as contemporary artefacts, fostering dialogue on sustainability and modern waste while resonating with a history of exploitation—whether in the dairy industry, natural resources, domesticated animals, or female bodies. By engaging with materiality, Tessa Silva draws parallels and connections between these categories, highlighting how, under the colonising gaze, both land and female bodies (human or non-human) have been treated as exploitable resources.
IMAGE: Feminised Protein Loop, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
EMILIA GONZÁLEZ
Emilia González’s artistic practice is rooted in the interplay between smell and memory. She constructs personal universes, drawing from a constellation of memories and emotions evoked by scents. Through these explorations, she conjures a sense of familiarity and intimacy, transporting past experiences into the present with a single sniff.
In Primordial Soups, González bridges the geographical and emotional distance between the landscapes and cartographies she inhabits: London and Quito, her hometown. The exhibition features Lean In, Press Me, Breathe, an olfactory device containing a sample of moss from her Deptford studio, alongside her textile art pieces that depict the verdant terrain and mountainous relief of Ecuador. Pichincha, a handcrafted woollen textile, captures the topography of the eponymous Ecuadorian volcano. Suelo de Páramo, part of her Ground Study series, presents a microscopic deconstruction of the Ecuadorian jungle floor, realised in a digitally knitted wool textile accompanied by a bespoke scent distilled by the artist from selected local trees.
González explores her dual landscapes of London and Ecuador through the most intimate senses: touch and smell. Her art invites viewers to engage with the pieces through these often underutilised senses within the context of art, challenging conventional modes of interaction. It encourages viewers to approach closely, interact, and sometimes places them in uncomfortable positions and amidst scents that may not be entirely agreeable.
IMAGE: lean in press me breathe, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
HANNAH LEES
Hannah Lees creates micro-universes from a collection of miscellaneous discarded materials. Her artistic process begins with the intuitive selection of wasted plastics and natural remnants sourced from the Margate coast and Thames riverside. Incorporating living organisms and exploring the decay and transformation these ones cause. Her work delves into the microscopic universes of bacteria and other tiny living beings, highlighting their constant change.
After becoming a mother, Hannah Lees started exploring the concept of the vessel. She created a series of works where voids in coconuts, surfaces, and even Whitstable native oyster shells, were filled with assorted material pieces and plaster. Establishing connections between these carrying structures, and the symbiotic exchange proper of pregnant bodies. In this way, her work perceives the body as a vessel, a holding structure for inner universes.
Hannah Lees bridges conversations on ecological themes through an anthropological lens, focusing on contemporary human vestiges. By using waste plastics, found cultural objects, and organic remnants she gives them new meaning and reintroduces them into a new cycle of existence. Her practice highlights the anachronistic vestiges of our times and their role in the narratives of both past and present.
IMAGE: Tablet LXXXIII, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.
SÉAN SAVAGE FERRARI
Seán Savage Ferrari developed Across the Atlantic specifically for the occasion of Primordial Soups, bridging Latin America and Britain through the use of rubber—a resource that encapsulates intertwined narratives of economic entanglement, colonial exploitation, cultural exchange, environmental impact, and ongoing trade between these regions.
Rubber, initially harvested by indigenous Amazonian people, became a pivotal commodity in the late 19th century. Its commercial exploitation, spearheaded by British entrepreneurs who established plantations in the Amazon, later extended to other regions of Latin America and Southeast Asia. In this artwork, Seán Savage Ferrari uses discarded processed rubber, marked by tears, scars, and watermarks, to echo the material's tumultuous history. Amidst the textured haziness of the material, a seascape of the Atlantic Ocean emerges, symbolising what lies in between—a liminal space where collective memories may linger.
Given the ongoing challenges of oil extraction and deforestation in the Amazon, Ferrari’s piece comments on the extractive practices that continue to shape much of Latin America's economies today. The artwork also features traces of roots and spores, serving as a testament to the resilience and regeneration of nature amidst human exploitation.
IMAGE: Across the Atlantic, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.