An Entangled Bank

The Talbot Rice Gallery’s An Entangled Bank presents a united front of art and science, as Charles Darwin is re-considered in the name of contemporary art.

Celebrating 150 years since the publication of Darwin’s seminal On the Origins of Species and in collaboration with the Edinburgh University Collections’ Darwin’s Edinburgh exhibition, An Entangled Bank presents five artists' response to the Darwinian idea, featuring work from Christine Borland, Ilana Halperin, Brian Hewitt, Kenny Hunter and Ben Rivers.

Entering the exhibition, the first encounter is with a trio of delicate drawings by Halperin. The text and images read like a journal entry, as Ilana transcribes to an audience her experience of encountering Hawaii’s active volcano. The reference to a young Charles Darwin’s explorations is easy to infer, enriched as more artefacts of documentation from this trip appear, making this an informative rather than transformative collection.

Borland’s similarly scientific approach to the subject provides a biological, rather than geological, collision. Four plaster heads sit in bell jars, grimacing in their entrapment as we approach them. These ‘SimBodies and NoBodies’ are cast from educational models, ironically emblazed with an illusionary animation in their death-mask-like display. From this, the most disarming exhibit, to the adjacent Borland piece: four video-display portraits, that seem an irrelevant addition.

At the opposite ends of Darwinian translation are Hunter and Hewitt. Animals within the modern environment resonate on a human scale in Hunter’s stylised sculptures, whereas we are both an omniscient participant and a minute incident on the map of time, as Hewitt’s nerve centre of indiscernible numerical data collates rapidly before us. All River’s video works ask of us is time: faced with the statement "after a hundred-million years there will be nothing left on the surface of the earth that we have created", space for reflection is necessary.

These quietly-paced, beautiful pieces lament after a rudimentary lifestyle executed by few, and provide the most insightful work in the show. In survival of the fittest, River’s is far from extinct. The exhibited works all conclude at a great distance from the starting catalyst, as the prevailing relevance of Darwin’s work becomes clear in the broadest visualisations of artistic imaginings. Five worthy load-bears continue to walk the evolutionary road first trod in 1859.