Feedback Loops – new work at Millennium Images
‘Feedback Loops’ presents works from Dobrowolska’s and Ormond-Skeaping’s ongoing body of work on The Tibetan Plateau that began in 2012 as ‘Time Of The Glacier’.
Known as the Third Pole the Tibetan Plateau plays a crucial role in global climate and the Asian water cycle. Rising temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau have resulted in rapid glacial retreat and desertification as the permafrost melts and the fragile grass lands deteriorate. As the water tower of Asia dries up hydropolitical tension is increasing in Asia and the plateau’s influence on the formation of high pressure systems in Eurasia is felt as far away as Europe where summer heat waves have broken all records.
Using medium format film cameras Dobrowolska and Ormond-Skeaping depict the high altitude plains, geological formations and glaciers, inhabitants and manmade topographies of the Tibetan Plateau documenting development, pollution, desertification and glacial retreat.
Working with the region’s cultural archaeology Dobrowolska and Ormond-Skeaping intertwine the ecological and cultural significance of the plateau, a place revered as the symbolic threshold of human exploration, spirituality and as a crucial climatic component in global warming.
Through the use of sequences of images Dobrowolska and Ormond-Skeaping attempt to represent, the complexity of global systems and the near invisible changes that are inherent to climate change, socio-political change or psychological change. Struck by the intangibility of such systems that are visible yet unimaginable Dobrowolska and Ormond-Skeaping document site specific traces that reveal the impact these global systems have upon the landscape. The idea of feedback is to imply that every action humanity takes has consequences that feed back through these global systems and return to shape the future in a way we cannot foresee.
Teo Ormond-Skeaping (born 1987, UK ) & Lena Dobrowolska (born 1985, Poland) are a Polish British artist collaboration working with conceptual documentary photography and artist film currently living and working in both England and Poland.
Click here to view ‘Feedback Loops’.