Sumikhimprom 34.8827

Original painting, included in my solo exhibition Slow Creep at Project 78 Gallery.

Acrylic ink and gouache on linen board
210 x 300mm
2024

In the spring of 2024, I plotted a line of latitude (50.8518) through Project 78 Gallery on the south coast of England and followed it eastward online, creating a route
for a hypothetical circumnavigation—a virtual journey that would yield the imagery from which to make an exhibition. The impossible tour crossed 19 countries and two oceans—traversing cities, agricultural land, wilderness, mountains and lakes while locating multiple sites of cultural production, extractivism, protest, conflict, dispossession, extraterrestrial exploration, leisure and recreation.

This painting is derived from a photograph of a canteen at Sumykhimprom chemical plant on the outskirts of Sumy in Ukraine, taken prior to the Russian invasion. In March 2022 the plant was shelled, resulting in an ammonia leak that contaminated surrounding land within a 2.5km radius.

Read more at https://jamieatherton.com/slow-creep/