Un-Earthing is the title of an exhibition by Blue Patch’s first Associate Curator, Douceline van Caloen, a Hong Kong-Belgian curator and recent masters graduate from Curating Contemporary Art, at the Royal College of Art, London.
Un-Earthing engages with de-colonial perspectives on the legacies of extraction across land, people and labour, revealing how these practices continue to shape our world. The exhibition is an invitation for us to reconsider sustainability through a necessary critical lens.Douceline van Caloen
The UAL Hub
Blue Patch approached Douceline with the opportunity to put on an exhibition at The UAL Hub, a multi-functional space brilliantly designed for ‘incubating creativity’ in Peckham. The Hub was to be included in the Artists’ Open House, and part the 2026 Dulwich Festival.
Blue Patch Associates
As an organisation with creative roots, Blue Patch provides opportunities for artists, designers and curators. The Hub is a purpose built gallery, professionally managed and with technical support, fully integrated AV systems and pristine white walls, provided a brilliant space for Douceline to present her curatorial approach.
Blue Patch’s simple brief was that she had to complete our Carbon Reduction course and reference the environment. The brief is elastic – this is art after all.
Deadline – two Weeks
Douceline has the right qualities for teamwork and coordinated deadlines, installation and artists. To be calm and steady whilst operating a framework for project delivery is key. For a contemporary art curator, managing logistics is just as valuable as a sophisticated understanding for image and meaning.
The gallery was offered to Blue Patch late in the Festival’s proceedings. Douceline had to bring artists and theme together in under two weeks – no problem!
The Politics of Space
The topic of the exhibition was political, the work pulled you into hidden worlds, took the viewer on a journey, each artist was working inside a lived experience or, from a deep research-base.
This made Unearthing intriguing, we were to find (something) and bring it to the surface, discover the secret – or a lie.
Notes on an exhibition
This account is intuitive and skims the surface, but we must start somewhere.
One of the suggestions was that this show should travel and expand, as if curating inside a ‘Hub’ incubator rubbed off. Un-Earthing is the seed of a substantial research-led project.
Art
Bissy Riva‘s thickly painted surfaces crackled, like ripped textiles or ripping roots. Her churning colours both seductive and repellent. The artist spoke of floods and drought ravaging a beautiful landscape, of communities dealing with the impacts of extreme weather events and the vibrant and beautiful trauma when ecologies tip out of balance.
Across the gallery you hear faint rumbling, plaintive, then suddenly abrasive. Matilde Araoz Ellis‘s work is like techno folk art, ancient and futuristic, like seeing the light of a long-dead star, the primordial voice of deep earth. A weave, soft as a comforter, is flayed like a lamb, metallic speakers judder and minerals spill onto the floor. The source for Matilde’s work is Cornwall in the UK and Bolivia, she’s rooted in both places.
Magli, A Cult‘s work is mesmeric. A film, a sound piece and plates of metal corroded by salt. In the digital piece in order to see the work you first listen and, as the white dress is dancing across the vertical plain, you travel with the work. A tale is related by a whispering and illusive woman, she’s referencing an event, ancient but from a time that has not happened yet. We trace elements; salt, a preservative, a currency and a symbol of oppression and liberation. Sky, sea and white pyramids form angular vistas. The hypnotic flow is broken by a sneeze, like a little animal or a child has woken from a deep sleep.
Jonah Hoffman‘s illusionistic cable switches into a sign barring entry to a domain where secrets are locked up.
Cobalt, the colour of this cable, is summer sky, a critical metal that cools batteries, it’s in our bodies, jet turbines, artificial hips, it cleans crude oil, it’s in ceramics – cobalt is a valuable commodity. 70% of the worlds cobalt is extracted in dangerous and polluting conditions by artisanal miners, mainly, but not exclusively, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is a dangerous way to earn a living, notorious for child labour, accidents and ill health, pollutants, dust and elevated levels or radiation. Cobalt is recoverable and companies are springing up to strip and reuse the mineral.
Hoffman’s small companion painting of a mobile phone draped in a blue shroud suggested a cult object, do we need the latest Apple when we can switch to more ethical options (FairPhone)?
Blue is the colour of the night in Nasrah Omar‘s poetic images. Her work is not a poem, but it is like one; you read and, like little space ships, the words glide through your imagination – this sensory mingling of words into space is explained as we watch the film of the serpent that swallows its tail. At first the serpent looks to be an ammonite, it spins like a magic trick. The moving image consume itself and vanish without trace only to reappear and the cycle continues.
‘A 9ja (Niger) Delta Speculative Future’. Chiedu Okonta‘s man on an oil drum is wearing everyday vest and boxers, his feet cooling in blue water – or is this oil made to look good? His mood is hard to pin down, is he content, longing, territorial, guarding? Out of the drum tumble Yellow Trumpet flowers, a cheerful symbol of Nigeria. Across the hills, on the edge of a great basin, motifs have escaped from a video game, balloons drift.
This utopia is laced with tragedy. Ken Saro-Wiwa led a non-violent campaign to prevent the environmental ravages of the homeland of the Ogoni people by crude oil for petroleum extraction and waste dumping by international companies, including by Royal Dutch Shell. His non-violent campaign led to his execution in 1995. The shock and disgust that this could happen to a man trying to protect people and environment was felt across the world.
Where to now?
The work in this show moves between nations, industries and the multiverse. The world is never simple and the artists and curator have opened a very timely dialogue.
This is not about unleashing fury it’s seeing the complex externalities of production, the self-harms inflicted by our own species and the understanding that whilst we are conditioned to consume, we have the capacity to turn ‘hardwired’ patterns into new, conscious behaviours.
What is ‘civilisation’?
We can take a lead from this exhibition and consider the impacts of the products we make, buy and use. Is it vital to plump-up profit margins and smooth out consumables with palm oil? Do we need meat on a daily basis or is it time to change our diets? When we lift the lid on animal husbandry and industrial processes is this even appetising? Consider water, capturing waste water can make such a difference. can we adjust our business models to bake-in equal and fair incomes? Think of earth as a living being – there is work we can all easily do if the world is to keep turning for a while longer.
Talking about conversation
The Curator’s Conversation was a relaxed open chat. Artists shared a lot of insight and the audience, some of whom worked in NGOs, made for a rich dialogue. It was as if the exhibition had indeed laid an exploratory path for more people to join.
Children included
Douceline was really keen to include space for community activity. The workshops were ideal for people to sit, chat and draw. There were a few kids across the weekend, but it was a start. This is an important footnote to the exhibition because the environment was welcoming and inclusive, a great blueprint we think.
Posters
UAL kindly printed these posters – they made a colourful display around Peckham.
