Future Archaeology / Archeologia del Futuro

Blue Gallery: Dorsoduro 3061, Venice, Italy. 
29 Oct. – 29 Nov. 2026
Curated by Silvia Previti

A one-person exhibition with three sets of work: “Lossless,” “Fragments” and “Stained.”

Every work has at least two authors: the person who created it and the time that transformed it.

“Lossless” begins with the rediscovery of a small archive: Ektachrome slides I took in the mid-90s in Newport and Barnsley documenting declining urban centres — shuttered shopfronts, bingo halls; the silent legacy left behind by the closure of the mines. Stored for years they remained untouched until, in 2025, I digitised them and discovered some had deteriorated badly. Moisture and time had damaged the cellulose, merging the colours into intense purples, acid yellows and liquid greens. The original subject had disappeared; in its place emerged surfaces reminiscent of mineral landscapes, astronomical images or microscopic forms. Rather than discarding them as rejects, I choose to transform them into large digital prints, after thirty years of slow, analog transformation. To me, there is a poetry of abandonment that resonates between the original subject and the decaying surfaces.

“Fragments” is a constellation of 20 small mixed-media paintings, selected by the curator from around 150 works produced in 2023-25. Here, the same stratified materiality — accumulations, erasures, abrasions — is instead created through intentional gesture. There are analogous elements with my work as a DJ, particularly the idea of remixing: taking a recognisable fragment and allowing it to be transformed beneath successive layers until it becomes something else. They are presented as if an archaeologist from the future had unearthed fragments of a tiled mosaic without a motif to indicate how they fit together. The key is they all represent aspects of the Venetian environment.

“Stained” is a series of watercolours which faithfully reproduce the old plastic sleeves in which the slides were stored throughout these years, now stained and yellowed. It was enjoyable and challenging to explore the paradox of meticulously copying, with almost scientific precision, an image that is already abstract, generated not by imagination but by chance.