Tarnished Earth

The Tarnished Earth Street Gallery was launched in September 2010 outside City Hall on London’s South Bank with Ray Mears and Chief Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation. With an average stay of three weeks in virtually every major city in the UK, this stunning and poignant exhibition was seen by approaching 10 million people.

The exhibition featured powerful photography telling the story of Canada’s boreal forest which is being destroyed by a rush to extract oil from the tar sands which lie just below its surface, one of the world’s biggest ecological disasters.

As well as 24 stunning and thought-provoking images, it included a touch screen kiosk which allowed members of the public to sign a digital petition supporting the production of clean energy – over 40,000 people supported the campaign.

The street gallery was part of The Co-operative’s Toxic Fuels campaign, which aims to stop tar sands expansion.

It was featured in the Guardian,  Independent and Metro. The street gallery visited cities across the UK, including Leeds, Birmingham, Belfast, Manchester, Brighton, Plymouth, Cardiff, Northampton, Edinburgh, Swansea, Isle of Man, Sheffield and Liverpool. It was also taken to outside the EU headquarters in Brussels.