Annie O’Donnell’s series of collages, accompanied by vintage family photographs were originally made as thinking objects for a sculptural commission for the exhibition 'Chemical City' at MIMA (Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art) in 2022. This ‘Plans for Plants’ series considers the linkages between utopian dreams associated with technologies in the past, the perceived dystopia of deindustrialisation and the desire for a cleaner future.
Like many others, O’Donnell’s family moved to Billingham in England’s Teeside for work, where ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) an international chemical company had one of its first factories and arguably one of Britain’s most important chemical plants – known for its production of ammonia from coal. This was used both as a fertiliser and an explosive. The physical presence of the plant dominated the area and narratives from the workplace were often intermeshed with family life for the town’s population. Billingham and its chemical plant was also one of the workplaces Aldous Huxley visited and that triggered the writing of his book Brave New World in 1931. O’Donnell’s work gathers together the different strands of lives lived and the histories present in her hometown alongside an experience of nature and the industrial and raises questions about what it means to be 'of' a place often viewed as toxic. She is often drawn to colours present in what many might see as a grey industrial landscape. Those in her collages are associated with Billingham’s chemical plant - the blues of company logos or fertiliser bags; the orange and purple of the pipes that ran on piping bridges across roads; the bright green of the lawn in front of the ICI Agricultural Headquarters' Office; and the pastels of perspex samples and objects. The interactions of these colours, the motifs in her collage and the vintage photographs convey a sense of place and familiarity. They might also lead us to think about the connections and disjunctures between human relationships, histories and the industrial with nature and the environment.
