Semelparous (Belsize Park)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport, 100 Parliament Street

This post-edited photograph documents an installation centred around Joey Holder’s video work Semelparous (2020) – a monument to the European eel – as shown in the disused baths at Spring Health Leisure Centre in Belsize Park, London. The display included digital prints, a projection, laser-cut MDF, living ivy, and sound.

Representative of Holder’s research-led practice, Semelparous builds on her study of the European eel’s complex migration, reproduction, and biological makeup. The term 'semelparous’ characterises a species that undertakes a single reproductive episode before death – in the case of European eels, migrating more than 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to the bottom of the Sargasso Sea, to breed for a single time each Autumn. The species has been critically endangered since 2011 due to illegal trafficking to farms in Eastern Asia, as scientists remain unable to replicate its reproductive life in captivity.

Born in London, Joey Holder trained in Fine Art at Kingston University (BA, 2005) and Goldsmiths College (MA, 2010). Her work raises questions about our understanding of the world, the future of science, medicine, biology and human-machine interactions. Her first solo exhibition was at Project Space, The Woodmill, London (2011) and she has exhibited internationally since, with selected solo shows at: QUAD, Derby (2018); Bloc Projects, Sheffield (2018); The Photographers’ Gallery, London (2017); Sonic Arts, Amsterdam (2016) and Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2016). Selected group shows are: Digital Dilemma – The Architecture of Trust, Bureau Europa, Maastricht (2019); Future Love, HeK, Basel (2018); and Materialising the Internet, MU, Eindhoven (2017). She lives and works in Nottingham.

Places

Subjects

eel, river, Ocean

Materials & Techniques

pigment, pigment print, Hahnemühle Photo Rag, cotton paper, archival pigment

Artist

Joey Holder (1986 - )

Title

Semelparous (Belsize Park)

Edition

Number 1 in an edition of 1, plus 1 artist's proof

Date

2020

Medium

archival pigment print on paper

Dimensions

height: 80.0cm; width: 120.0 xm

Acquisition

Purchased from Seventeen March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Provenance

Seventeen Gallery; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 24 March 2021

GAC number

18901