Nat Faulkner Pushes Images Previous Its Limits

In the small foyer earlier than Camden Art Centre’s predominant gallery, Nat Faulkner has put in shallow tanks stuffed with iodine in a Victorian skylight. The gentle that dribbles by Aperture (Iodine) (all works 2026) on a gray January afternoon is the sticky orange of undiluted squash. Iodine reacts to daylight and was a key chemical in early images; over the period of the present, its color will steadily degrade till its unique efficiency survives solely in reminiscence. Every customer is washed on this iodine-infused gentle, like going by the chlorine at a public pool. We are all on this enterprise of change and decay collectively.    

Throughout ‘Strong Water’, which takes its title from the Latin title for nitric acid, Faulkner’s concepts conceal in plain sight: transformation, evolution and loss are embedded in his supplies and infuse his photographs and objects. Take Untitled (Biston betularia), a monochrome {photograph} of a peppered moth blown up in order that the small print of its wings evanesce into the encircling noise. The species’ colouration as soon as various from predominantly gentle with darkish spots to primarily darkish with gentle spots, till sooty fallout through the Industrial Revolution blackened its habitat and darker moths turned prevalent. Faulkner prints the picture throughout two plywood panels, the be part of operating proper by the center of the insect; this counterintuitive format suggests the moth’s transition from one state to a different and embeds the concept that images, with its positives and negatives, incorporates each colourations inside the similar picture. (It can be a discomfiting reminder that, as a species, we’re as topic to evolutionary shifts as Biston betularia.)

It helps me to consider Faulkner as a sculptor moderately than a photographer. Even his two-dimensional works have a mechanical complexity that invests them with each a mysterious otherness and a slight Heath Robinson vibe. Opposite Untitled (Boston betularia) is Aqua Fortis (Strong Water), an enormous multi-panel {photograph} of a pyramidal pile of spiralling steel swarf at a recycling plant in Italy. This image of a heap of steel is itself a steel object – the silver on the photographic paper would possibly solely be microns thick, however that’s what you’re . The work’s scale is decided by the utmost focal size at which Faulkner’s studio permits him to reveal its constituent sheets, whereas their various exposures are a report of fluctuating energy ranges on the National Grid throughout this hours-long course of.

You can’t inform any of this backstory from the image, any greater than you’ll be able to inform what relationship the dimensions of the picture has to the ‘real’ factor. Because the picture is huge, we assume the pile have to be even vaster. To underscore this ambiguity of scale, included within the backside right-hand nook is a chunk of Sellotape that the artist used to safe the damaging, prominently that includes his fingerprints and enlarged to the dimensions of a tabletop.    

The congruence between Faulkner’s place of creating and place of show, and between his supplies and topic, is what offers ‘Strong Water’ its construction and power. ‘Analogue’ is a sequence of rubbings on skinny copper sheets of the ground and partitions of his south London studio. They are electroplated with silver salvaged from NHS X-ray labs and put in on the corresponding surfaces of the gallery, as if the molten steel carrying the imprint of all these fractures and tumours has escaped from Faulkner’s alchemical lair and reconstituted itself right here.      

Faulkner’s fascination with what images tells us – versus what we predict it exhibits us – about time is compelling. Within this digicam obscura of a present, the material of trying is refashioned. It is typically awkward, typically luminously pretty – however, like an isotope pumping out radiation throughout geological epochs, it’s alive.

Nat Faulkner’s ‘Strong Water’ is on view at Camden Art Centre, London, till 22 March

^{Main picture: Nat Faulkner, Aperture (Iodine), 2026, Iodine answer, acrylic body, 2026. Courtesy: the artist, Brunette Coleman and Camden Art Centre, London; {photograph}: Rob Harris}