Holly Birtles
London
Holly Birtles is a UK-based artist, her work incorporates photography, performance, and prop production through digital and analogue processes. Exploring ecological crises, myth, and personal narratives, she connects performance to place. Recent projects integrate AI and darkroom techniques, responding to slow violence, ecological destruction, myth and sentimentality associated with selected rivers. Birtles exhibits internationally, collaborating with writers, visual artists, and musicians.
Fighting Fish
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Holly Birtles reflects on her work inspired by the Thames River and Estuary, where performers embody ‘Thames Monsters.’ In Chennai, she engages with the Adyar and Cooum rivers, exploring sentimentality, myth, care, and destruction. Her work juxtaposes environmental ecologies with personal responses to the sites, highlighting the paradox between devotion to sacred rivers and the environmental toxicity caused by anthropocentric activity. The project ‘Fighting Fish’ symbolizes the intertwining of magnificence and grotesque, leading to semi-fictitious life forms that reflect the complex relationship between people, rivers, and creatures. Birtles uses analogue photography and AI, collaborating and subverting the Mid Journey dataset through experimental silver gelatin printing.