Degree Show Season— Humans Lived Here Once

A Look at the 2017 Ruskin MA Degree Show
18th June 2017. Oxford.

Early Summer is one of my favourite times in theart world for one simple reason— it means that I get to go visit a whole slew of exciting degree shows. Last year when I was in London, I absolutely loved getting to visit all the art colleges for the first time. In makeshift gallery spaces filled with art by artists you don’t know, usually without any interoperation, your preconceptions are utterly stripped away, and there are surprises around every turn. They can be a real mixed bag of course, but in general I’ve found them to be spaces of exploration, humour, and confrontation where boundaries are questioned and new modes of thought are introduced. 

In short, when I realised that the time was upon us again, I was keen to see as much as I possibility could. Living in Oxford now, I knew that I wouldn’t have the chance to make it to all the degree shows in London again, but I did have access to new venues including Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art. With so many different mediums, themes, and practices at play, it’s impossible to write a simple round up of a degree show, but I thought I’d take a moment to focus on one piece from the Ruskin MA show that’s stuck with me.

Steve Rowell is an American artist based between Los Angeles and Oxford who works with photographs, video, sound, maps, and spacial concepts. His practice is heavily research based—a trend I noticed in other Ruskin grads, including Gemma Spry’s excellent video piece The Three Hares Constellation Archive—and his video Humans Lived Here Once displays that perfectly. 

Accompanied by a small installation showing the Earth cut out from blue polystyrene, a round void created by the debris left on the floor, the beautiful images on the screen immediately caught my attention. Without sound, it shows magnificent scenes of nature intercut with details of old paintings and frescos. There’s an arial shot of the ocean and waves break on rocky outcrops. A woman painted in red robes appears, lit by candle. There are rainforests and fields and wide stretches of empty beach. 

When I finally made my way across the room and was settled in with a pair of headphones, the narration offered vital contextualisation, making his perspective clear. Over the brilliant imagery, you hear, among other things, excerpts from J. G. Ballard’s “Prinsoner of the Coral Deep”, audio from the Apollo 17 lunar mission, and Ruskin’s lecture “The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century.” Slowly, as the video progresses, you realise that things aren’t as nice as they might seem. Video and imagery of extinct animals are intercut. The last Tasmanian tiger paces in its cage. There’s a lingering shot of fossils. This is about nature and our planet, but it’s also about time, deep time. Slowly, I started to realise that for almost the entirety of the video, I hadn’t seen a single image of a living human. 

In Humans Lived Here Once, Rowell does a brilliant job of combining beauty and decay, safety and danger. The images cut into one another, leaving you unsettled. When a lone human does appear on a beach, it almost seems wrong. It’s a threat though, or a premonition. He’s taking a wide perspective, showing us the places where life starts— the oceans and rainforests— and in the same measure, showing us how life ends. 

This is the future we’re being propelled towards, for better or worse. This is what is in our cards as our technology progresses and we attempt to fix our changing climate.  We have choices, of course. We adapt and evolve, react to disruptions, but our choices matter. Our ideas and actions matter. They’re what have determined our past and they’re what will shape our future, even if the end is already written. There’s a storm cloud coming. 

It’s a brilliant piece, and I only wish that I had the chance to see it again. He’s definitely one to keep your eye on.