'The Making of Lake Chagan' (often called The Atomic Lake) is a painted freeze-frame of a landscape being destroyed and created at the same time; by a Soviet nuclear detonation in Kazakhstan, 1965. I find it fascinating that people still fish there and eat what they catch, despite knowing how the lake was made and that the water (and surrounding area) remains contaminated.  

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That uneasy coexistence between catastrophe and ordinary life is what drew me to the imagery.  

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I’m interested in how something so violent can be absorbed back into the landscape.

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Kirsty Harris’s practice centres around violent, man-made events that scar the landscape: the detonation of the atomic bomb. She spends hours trawling through military archives of film footage and declassified documents, compiling imagery & data on nuclear tests. Her work manifests across large un-stretched oil paintings, cyanotypes, machine woven tapestries, graphite on raw canvas, interactive audio & massive projections that make the room shake.  

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Her work has been exhibited at galleries including Charlie Smith London, Saatchi Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, Westbeth Gallery & Vane Gallery. Her work is held in collections including the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, The National Atomic Testing Museum, Nevada & The Peace Museum, Yorkshire.

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