Isthmus, Austin’s first solo show in Turin, is centred around an imagined exchange between the River Po, in Italy, and the River Great Oose, in East Anglia. As the two rivers start whispering their secrets through the pipes of quarries and mines that populate their spectral fenlands, drowned mysteries resurface.

The mythic and folkloric histories of each river – from the origins of the Eridanos, the waterway believed by the Romans to lead to the source of precious amber, to the legends of Saint Aethelryth, whose body remained miraculously preserved in the fenland landscape after her burial – are woven together with materials scavenged from historic, industrial and agricultural sites in each landscape. Within the exhibition, materials and forms – plant matter, limestone, chalk, peat, sylvite (a mineral found deep in the Fen bedrock), casts from Austin’s body, the body of an eel, parts of a dredger and a Tesla vehicle - incorporated into sculptural and installation works, become associative prompts, echoing and harbouring the memory of geological, industrial, and political actors and histories in the landscape.

Isthmus was curated by Caterina Avataneo and supported by Cripta 747 in Turin. For more information see https://www.cripta747.it/miriam-austin-isthmus-curated-by-caterina-avataneo/