Carol Rhodes
‘EXTRACTION’, JUPITER ARTLAND, EDINBURGH: UNTIL 26 JULY
11 April – 26 July 2026
Carol Rhodes, Land Levels and Rises, 2010 © Carol Rhodes Estate; photo: Michael Brzezinski
‘Extraction’ explores how energy systems shape culture, land and belief, through work by artists Carol Rhodes, john gerrard, Marguerite Humeau, Siobhan McLaughlin and John Latham.
Their practices are set in dialogue with Jupiter’s own layered landscape, where traces of the shale gas industry, North Sea petroleum economy and contemporary renewables are simultaneously visible.
Rather than presenting energy history as linear progress, Extraction reveals a repetitive cycle built on belief, optimism and inevitability. This exhibition investigates and reflects upon the emotional and ideological structure of energy systems, considering labour, identity and landscape without nostalgia or triumphalism.
After the erosion of energy systems, what remains is infrastructure, waste, altered land and symbolic fragments. Jupiter’s own landscape is also part of the exhibition – walking around the sculpture park, visitors can encounter views as they gaze in various directions out from the the artland; the historic shale bings – Scotland’s first oil industry – and the landing site for the Forties oil pipeline out to the North Sea, as well as the solar-field which powers Jupiter’s site. The exhibition is a lens offering clarity on how societies build and unbuild worlds through energy. It invites the viewer to recognise themselves inside a cycle rather than at its conclusion, to reconsider progress, permanence and the future.