Warning Signs: Increase Photosynthesis (2023)

Karen Francesca’s mosaics are compressed signals from and about ecological devastation.  In the natural world black / yellow,  and  black / red indicate danger or poison. Karen employs these colours around images and symbols; fragments of resistance and subversion in the biosphere that refuse any simplification in line with ‘carbon neutral’ or ‘net zero’ strategies. These Warning Signs are like shields, heraldry against the oil industry’s camouflage; against its false aims and its normalised propaganda.

Naomi Salaman and Sophie Gibson have responded to Warning Signs with a three-part drawing of Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction,  “the eighth wonder of the world”, according to Ken Dodd because

“you get on and wonder how to get off”

Motorways hum in the background, indifferent to their elaborate, highly wrought construction, and their mind numbing ordinariness. The weight of these Warning Signs lean up against a stack of Enclyclopedia Britannicas. This thirteenth edition from 1926 holds a detailed record of  the natural sciences, technology, industry, empire, geography and history up to the first few decades of the twentieth century.  Whilst Motor Vehicle is described over sixteen pages, Motorway does not yet make an entry.

 

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