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Jyll Bradley, Marcus Coates, Dorothy Cross, Alexis Deacon, Jeremy Deller, Tania Kovats, Kaffe Matthews, Semiconductor, Alison Turnbull, Paulo Catrica

This exhibition brought together work by twelve artists who travelled to and spent time in the Galápagos archipelago through a residency programme initiated in 2007. Each artist was invited on the basis of their profound engagement with the opportunity, and each found the experience transformative for their artistic practice and their life.

Collectively they demonstrated a considerable variety of approaches and disciplines within the visual arts, ranging across film-making, video, installation, painting, sculpture, photography, animation, illustration and sound. The artists also brought to the project, and developed during it, considerable skills of communication and interaction with scientists, tourists, and local inhabitants of the Galápagos, allowing them to explore subjects of scientific or social interest consistent with their artistic concerns in depth. The works they produced individually give compelling form to profound personal visions developed through their experiences on the islands. Shown together, they built a unique dreamscape of a remarkable place, messages for mankind from the stark realities of Galápagos.

The Gulbenkian Galápagos Artists’ Residency Programme and Galápagos exhibition was organised by the Galapagos Conservation Trust in partnership with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Additional support came from the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Natural History.

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Listen to Galapagos: ‘We are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps’ Panel Discussion with Greg Hilty, Marcus Coates, David Cunningham, Jeremy Deller, Tania Kovats, Alison Turnbull and zoologist Professor Aubrey Manning

Images: Alan Dimmick