EXHIBITIONS \ Edgar Martins \ The Time Machine
21 September – 5 November 2011
Lindoso Power Station: Control Room (frontal view), 2011
From the series The Time Machine
C-type print
Alto Rabagão Power Station: Busbar Shaft (view from the Machine Hall), 2010
From the series The Time Machine
C-type print
Fratel Power Station: Machine Hall, 2011
From the series The Time Machine
C-type print
Raiva Power Station: Hydropower Panel in the Control Room, 2011
From the series The Time Machine
C-type print
Working exclusively with photography, Edgar Martins (b.1977) has gained international critical acclaim with his perplexing yet familiar urban landscapes, presented as visibly artificial environments. Martins joined the gallery this year and The Time Machine is his first solo show at The Wapping Project Bankside.
The Time Machine is a body of previously unseen works, shot between 2010 and 2011. Structured as a topographic survey of hydro-electricity generating plants in Martins’ native Portugal, The Time Machine deals with the succession of radical transformations in the Portuguese society and its traditional industries, during the 20th and 21st centuries.
Working closely with the EDP Foundation, Martins gained exclusive access to 20 power plants located across the country. Many of the power stations were built in the 1970s, towards the end of António de Oliveira Salazar’s regime, a time of hopeful prospects of rapid economic growth and social change. Their tacit raison-d’être was to fuel the country’s expansion and propel it into a prosperous future. Forty years on, and now largely automated, most of the power stations are operated by half a dozen employees at the most, including specialists, cleaning and security staff. Computerised mechanisms regulate the complex hydroelectric system, which underpins the production and distribution of energy, lending consistency to the fantasy of machines ruling over man. Although the power stations were conceived at a time when man and machine envisaged a shared future, today, they allude to the paradox of this impossibility, and reveal the broken promises of this unrealised prospect of modernity.
The Time Machine – a monograph by Edgar Martins available in both, standard and limited edition, with essays by Geoff Dyer and João Pinharanda will be published in October 2011.
Edgar Martins’ project was funded by the EDP Foundation and 50 large scale images will be exhibited at the Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon (13 October – 11 December 2011).