Bobinska Brownlee presents an installation by Slawa Harasymowicz.

800 tonnes of silt is a montage of digital film, print and sound.

The coordinates 54°4.3′N 10°50.40′ reference the site of a forgotten tragedy in the Baltic Sea.

The silt referred to in the exhibition title was excavated from the Thielbek, a cargo ship sunk in 1945 and brought ashore in Lubeck in 1949. Tracking the sediment’s uncanny trajectory, the show’s composite point of departure includes many fragments, clues, and historical records rediscovered by the artist. 

800 tonnes of silt follows on from Klinkerwerk, a site-specific installation at a former WWII brickworks complex in Hamburg Neuengamme (2024), as well as earlier projects including Zatoka (The Bay) Foundation for the Archaeology of Photography, Warsaw (2020-2021),  Radio Warszawa performance Freud Museum London (2016) and The Spring to Come National Poetry Library London (2016-17).

Sława Harasymowicz’s narrative-driven practice explores the intersections between archive and fiction, the documentary and the uncanny, the physical and the unconscious. She works with drawing, photography, and print, as well as moving image and sound. Harasymowicz holds an MA from the Royal College of Art and is currently completing a practice-based PhD at University of the Arts London.

Selected awards include The Arts Foundation Fellowship and V&A Illustration Awards, as well as scholarships from Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage in the field of visual arts and grants from Arts Council England. Her screenprints are included in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Prints and Drawings collection. Born in Kraków, Poland, Harasymowicz is currently based in Kent.