Landscapes of Hope
Rachael Champion and Susie Olczak
Curated by
Becca Pelly-Fry
SCHOOL is pleased to present Landscapes of Hope a two-person show of works by Rachael Champion and Susie Olczak, curated by Becca Pelly-Fry. Both artists transmit ideas of local hopefulness in the context of the widespread climate challenges we all face, through stories of adaptation. Olczak’s recent research in Latin America considers local rituals and routines of life as the foundations for making engaging stories in extreme environments. Champions’ work addresses the corporeality of the materials we extract, transform and consume, and how these actions affect the physical characteristics of landscapes and ecosystems.
Considering local stories, customs and rituals, the exhibition is a visual experiment in responding to landscape, exploring community resilience and adaptability. Located in a ‘borderland’ territory, both a coastal location and a frontier town facing Europe, Landscapes of Hope offers ways of navigating the most pertinent and challenging issues of our time. Both artists are interested in overturning ideas of human supremacy, encouraging a return to nature-led intelligence and tending to the pockets of hope that exist within hostile conditions.
Rachael Champion’s work explores the physical, material and historical relationships between ecology, industry and the built environment. Coalescing at the intersection between biology, geology and architecture, her practice interrogates the corporeality of the materials we extract, transform and consume, and the effects these actions have on the physical characteristics of landscapes and ecosystems.
She has exhibited widely throughout the UK and internationally in a variety of site-specific contexts. Leading contemporary art galleries where her work has been presented include the Whitechapel Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, Hales Gallery, Zabludowicz Collection and Modern Art Oxford. She is a recipient of the Arts Foundation Future Awards and the Red Mansion Prize as well as a former artist-in-residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art. Rachael is a graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts.
Susie Olczak is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on sculpture. Her work considers ideas of contingent making and adaptation in relation to climate change and asks the viewer to look again at the world, drawing parallels between contingent making processes of artworks and methods in society of human and natural adaptation, i.e. the human drive to build temporary structures, shelters and rafts, used both for adventure and survival. Her current research juxtaposes distinct landscapes facing uncertainty due to climate change and extreme scenarios of too much or too little water.
Her work has been shown internationally in Berlin, Japan and the United States. She has exhibited around the United Kingdom, attended residencies in Finland, Panama and Chile. She has been commissioned to produce artworks by BBC Scotland, Charles Saatchi at the Big Chill Festival, the National Trust, The Institute of Astronomy and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, as well as for King’s, Jesus, and Peterhouse Colleges of Cambridge University. She is also the recipient of the Villiers David Travel Grant and a bursary award winner at the Royal Society of Sculptors. Recent accolades include the Ingram Collection Purchase Prize, the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award residency and exhibitions at Standpoint Gallery, Hestercombe Gallery, Tremenheere Gallery, White Conduit Projects and The Lightbox.