Description

Adam Hogarth: Roadside Picnic, is a print from a series of tinted photo-etchings and aquatints. It forms part of the artist’s ongoing research into the environmental impact of the post-nuclear legacy. This is leading up to a larger body of work titled “The Future’s Forgotten Rituals”.

The photographs for the series are all taken at locations impacted by the use of nuclear technology. Adam has visited all of them in the course of his research. Within the series are prints with images from Chernobyl, Pripyat and Hiroshima.

Adam has worked on each print to transform its character. He wanted  it to have the appearance of age and weathering. According to the overall theme of the work, it had to look as if it was  salvaged from an exclusion zone, or dug up from the earth. So he has tanned each print individually with tannic acid.  Because this process is unpredictable, each print is different from the next, even within the same edition.

The Future’s Forgotten Rituals – the background

The Strugatsky Brother’s novel “Roadside Picnic” has directly  influenced the artist’s subject matter. This is a story in which professional “Stalkers” would illegally salvage objects from an exclusion zone and resell them on the black market. The artist has created his own version of the story, which forms an entire scenario for the work. He describes it as follows:

This work documents a series of fictitious folk communities that hang onto life 900 years after a global mass extinction. A worldwide nuclear meltdown and environmental disaster have regressed humanity into a new dark age. Sea levels have risen catastrophically. Many animal species are extinct.  Poison has affected much of the land. Humans hang onto life, collecting photographs and artefacts dug up from the ground. They regard these artefacts  as “Sacred Objects” which remind them of a way of life they thought they had lost through the nuclear disaster. They then use them for performance of masked rituals and ceremonies.

The entire series of works will eventually form an exhibition complete with performances and rituals from a post-nuclear future.

About the Artist

Adam Hogarth is one of GroundWork’s selected artists.

Adam Hogarth lives and works in London, UK. He completed a BA Hons in Fine Art, Northumbria University and an MFA in Fine Art Printmaking, The Royal College of Art. Since 2016 he has been the printmaking fellow at The Royal Academy of Arts. His technical expertise has also made him head screen-printer at Thames-side print studio.

He has exhibited nationally including the ICA, Tate Britain, The Royal Academy of Arts, The William Morris Gallery. Internationally he has shown at Kobe Sans University (Japan) and the Finland Print Triennale.