We are honoured to present our forthcoming exhibition The Residues, a body of work from artist Onya McCausland, considering ecological memory and our evolving relationship with the living world.

The Residues speak of land sites where the earth has undergone a post extractive alteration, where the chemical balance of the earth is disrupted and damaged. The paintings, made with materials collected from industrial land sites, mine tailings and waste dams, are reconfigured as rich, site-specific colours that reimagine landscape through the residue of extractive exploitation.

McCausland's deep engagement with geology, chemistry, and site-specific research gives the paintings an unusual authority. The surfaces are not symbolic approximations of landscape; they are landscape, chemically and historically compressed into pigment. Burning, milling, and refining the minerals alters tone and density, meaning that subtle shifts in colour correspond to real transformations in matter.

Traditional tropes of landscape painting are explored to attend to surface, depth and perspectival orientations, evoking a sense of place and displacement, familiarity and dissonance.

This exhibition marks a flourishing collaboration between CLOSE Gallery and Proposition, centred around a shared ethos of responsible stewardship in service of planetary responsibility.

📍 Proposition Bethnal Green, 279 Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, London, E2 0EL

🗓️ 10 October 2026 - 09 January 2027

⏱️ Wednesday–Saturday, 1–7pm

🗓️ Private View - 09 October, 6:30-8.30pm

🎟️ Free to attend | RSVP here