Coulson & Tennant / Helene Schmitz

These exhibitions bring together two diverse bodies of work addressing issues of climate change, protection of the environment, and the conflict between man and the natural world, featuring work by Scottish collaborative artists Coulson & Tennant and Swedish photographer Helene Schmitz.

Coulson & Tennant (Scotland) are an award winning artist partnership that develop lens based works to spark conversations about the past, present and future of our man-made and natural world. At The Tolbooth they present new video work and photography exploring the landscape, geology and the ecology of the Arctic, Subarctic and Antarctic regions. By documenting this rapidly changing environment the artists hope to share the beauty of these fragile places, contribute to the climate emergency discussion and inspire all of us to work together to protect these incredible regions and our planet as a whole.

Human exploitation of the planet is implicit in the detailed landscapes of Helene Schmitz (Sweden), who speculates on the relationship between ownership and misuse of natural resources. In the series Thinking Like a Mountain, she sheds light on the relationship between ownership and exploitation of natural resources in the Nordic countries, a part of the world not usually associated with the term ‘colonialism’. Schmitz contends that the colonial project never came to an end – it only changed its appearance. Globalization and contemporary technologies have instead allowed for a shift in the source of neo-colonialist projects, from nation-states to multinational corporations.

Stirling Photography Festival are working with Street Level Photoworks to bring a uniquely curated collection of works to the Tolbooth as part of their Stories 2022 festival programme. The story of the Earth is written in epochs, periods of geological age that mark change over vast periods of time. Man’s impact on the Earth since the industrial revolution has sparked immense changes, and so a new epoch has been described. The Anthropocene – the period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment. - Stirling Photography Festival