Fog Machine presents a new body of work by artist and filmmaker Rob Lye, developed during his residency at Eltham College.
At the centre of Fog Machine is a new moving-image work, Afon, filmed in the landscape surrounding the artist’s home in Wiltshire. The film focuses on the River Avon and the industrial terrain of the former Avon Rubber factory — a site where local geography, industrial history and personal memory converge.
Through layered moving image and shifting atmospheres, Afon traces the residual presence of industry across the terrain. The river operates as both physical and symbolic current, carrying traces of labour, extraction and transformation through the landscape. Presented with a 7.1 spatial sound composition, wind, water and distant industrial resonances circulate through the gallery space. Sound functions as a sculptural element, extending the landscape beyond the screen and situating the viewer within a shifting field of environmental and acoustic presence.
Alongside these broader histories, the work engages with personal grief. Landscape and weather become carriers of memory, suggesting a terrain in which ecological, industrial and emotional time intersect.
The exhibition also includes 20°32’50.4”S 67°22’57.6”W (2022), filmed in Bolivia prior to the 2019 military coup. Developed through extensive research into the lithium economy, the work centres on the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat and a site of vast lithium reserves. Observing the slow processes of industrial evaporation pools, the film considers lithium as both a material resource, often termed ‘white gold’ and a psychotropic substance, drawing connections between global extraction, digital infrastructures and personal histories of mental health. Recurring gestures and traces of hands link the body to landscape, industry and systems of mediation.
ogether, these works trace a movement between geographically distant but conceptually aligned sites, where extraction, memory and material transformation unfold across different temporal and spatial scales.
23 April -16 May 2026 in the Gerald Moore Gallery’s GF space.
Book your free spot on the private view and animation workshop: https://geraldmooregallery.org/exhibitions/101/overview/
