Heavy Water Collective

The Heavy Water Col­lec­tive make art­works that respond to archives and col­lec­tions to decon­struct and recon­fig­ure the human and more-than-human his­to­ries embed­ded in the British and glob­al Land­scapes. Their exhi­bi­tion at Ground­Work Gallery presents a body of work that brings togeth­er research devel­oped pri­mar­i­ly in response to the Sedg­wick Muse­um of Earth Sci­ences in Cambridge. 

Muse­um Direc­tor Liz Hide describes the Sedg­wick muse­um ​“as an inte­gral part of the Depart­ment of Earth Sci­ences, sup­port­ing uni­ver­si­ty research and teach­ing as well as being an accred­it­ed pub­lic muse­um. The Muse­um is there­fore a rich and porous inter­face between the aca­d­e­m­ic and pub­lic spheres, where the pub­lic can inter­act not just with amaz­ing objects, but with the research and researchers that work on them.” (2024)

The works devel­oped by the Heavy Water Col­lec­tive entan­gle the weight of geo­log­i­cal tem­po­ral­i­ties with untold human his­to­ries, hold­ing sub­jects such as folk­lore and the prob­lem­at­ic lega­cies of empire in a sci­en­tif­ic con­text to re-cat­e­gorise the world through the wealth of arte­facts held in the Sedg­wick muse­um and archives. 

As a way to evoke the com­plex­i­ty and rich­ness of the mate­ri­als they have researched, the Heavy Water Col­lec­tive has cre­at­ed a body of work that encom­pass­es a diverse array of media. In this exhi­bi­tion you will find sculp­ture, paint­ing, pho­tographs and mov­ing-image that reflect on moments of tur­bu­lence found in the col­lec­tions. This mul­ti­fac­eted approach visu­al­ly artic­u­lates and nav­i­gates the glob­al uncer­tain­ties we all face.