HORIZON

Duo exhibition by Ben Malcolmson & Lucy Tevlin, exhibited at Flax Project Space, 2025

LO-TEK is a 16mm film produced in Autumn 2024 during Tevlin’s residency with Harkat Studios, situated in the mountainous region of Kalimpong in the Himalayas, West Bengal, India. Made through a process of hand developing 16mm and diy contact printing in colour, the materiality of the film is made evident through this painstaking process. Drawing on references such as Derek Jarman, the film features blue as its primary visual motif. In harmony with the landscape, houses are nestled into steep slopes and constructed using readily available materials as well as bricks and concrete. The relationship between technology and the landscape is ever present, bringing into question historical Western ideas of progress and the mythology of technology. The film’s title references Julia Watson’s writings on a global exploration of nature-based technology.

Malcolmson’s Untitled Soundscape #1, 2025 is a responsive audio piece to Tevlin’s moving image work (LO-TEK, 2024), exploring themes of place, land, and human presence through a multilayered soundtrack. Archival field recordings, distant hums, and fragmented voices merge with the tactile textures of celluloid tape. Accompanying both works, located in Studio 18, is Horizon, 2025, a light installation featuring shifting hues of violet, purple and blues, resulting in immersive play with perspective and movement. Malcolmson’s further presentation of an open studio showcases his accumulation of work from his membership at Flax Art Studios 2020-2025, featuring process-based sketchbooks, a curated selection of pervious exhibited works, publications and forthcoming projects.