The Feed, #goldkingmine is artist Drew Lenihan’s ongoing inquiry into the aesthetic politics of the Gold King Mine Spill, in which the EPA accidentally release millions of gallons of contaminated water into Cement Creek near Silverton, Colorado. The environmental castrophe eventually poisoned the Animas and San Juan rivers and destroyed the main water supply of the Navajo Nation. The artist juxtaposes actual elements collected from the mine and creek with the instagram hashtag #goldkingmine as a means of exploring the ebb and flow of digital narratives and how their collective aesthetic nature revises physical “truths”.

 

The Feed, #goldkingmine is artist Drew Lenihan’s ongoing inquiry into the aesthetic politics of the Gold King Mine Spill, in which the EPA accidentally release millions of gallons of contaminated water into Cement Creek near Silverton, Colorado. The environmental castrophe eventually poisoned the Animas and San Juan rivers and destroyed the main water supply of the Navajo Nation. The artist juxtaposes actual elements collected from the mine and creek with the instagram hashtag #goldkingmine as a means of exploring the ebb and flow of digital narratives and how their collective aesthetic nature revises physical “truths”.

 

 

The second iteration of the project takes the refuse and waste water and dyes, tears and paints canvas, leaving a visual positive with the environmental negative. As paintings, the work aligns itself with other cadmium based abstraction, while questioning where the resources and pigments of contemporary painting come from. Historically, cadmium was found next to silver ores and other precious stones in mines. The paintings situate contemporary painting and art objects and materials within the larger frame work of modern extraction and the parallels between precious metals and the origins of artist materials.