Expedition / Experience

The backdrop to this is of course that the extinction of biodiversity by human activity continues apace. This concern led conservation biologists to establish the Payamino Project aiming to secure the future of an extraordinarily biodiverse area of Ecuadorian lowland tropical rainforest. This project is an alliance of Northern European research institutes (including the University of Glasgow) and indigenous owners of Payamino, whose territory is of interest to extractive industries – in particular oil and timber. The project supports sustainable development projects within the community and offers the opportunity for research expeditions and field classes to take place in this incredible environment.

In 2009 a team of zoology students went to Payamino to record bird and amphibian diversity. EX… develops themes from this experience and brings together the creative work of people with different relationships to the area, expedition and project. Five students worked with an artist (Kate Foster who was part of the 2009 expedition) and a geographer (Martin Muir who lived, worked and researched in Payamino for a year).

Kate and Martin were able to both suggest different ways to create images in the field and also how to process and display these thereafter.

Having all visited Payamino, on expedition, field course or for research and work purposes, we each have different memories, thoughts and ideas about the place and our experience of it. Each of the participants had taken photos, kept a diary, or drawn while in Payamino, and returning 'home' from the 'field' we arrive at a different sense of the experience by making new representations from what we collected (film, photos, writing, drawing, sculpture, sound). It is a process of taking distance in combination with taking in new information (reading, discussion) and drawing comparisons. Also through this process we became aware of our own, partial, dynamic viewpoints.

We could only ever hope to present extracts of our time in Ecuador, specific moments that caught our imagination (and which we had captured in one form or another). After much consideration and creative exchange, EX... was born.

// EX..changes

Please visit our Exchanges blog and let us know what you thought about the exhibition, the idea, the output or anything else you'd like to start conversation about.