Drowned Annihilation was an exhibition at Outhouse Gallery, 2026 by Jamie Lee and Emily Stapleton-Jefferis.
outhouse gallery is pleased to present a new interactive art installation by Jamie Lee and Emily Stapleton-Jefferis. This exhibition marks their second together as collaborators following We are All Lichens Now and expands their research into interactivity, sound design and ceramics to form new works that treat London’s deep ecological past as signal of what is to come. In addition to site-specific experimentation this exhibition draws on science fiction tropes from, notably The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer.
Drowned Annihilation like Lichen is the combination of two things in reciprocity, sharing resources and site. Lichens embody a queer ecology, being part algae and part fungi they defy traditional scientific categorisation; having shifted from individual, to dyad, to ecosystem. This new exhibition attempts to move the collaboration on, propelled into the frantic future, combining the spheres of technology and ecology to create a more entangled and nuanced relationship between their work and practices in an intimate setting.
Emily’s artworks sculpted from clay, itself the softened residue of weathered rock, show different forms of Lichen on a macro scale. For Drowned Annihilation however, they take on a more primordial shapelessness, appearing as an unintelligible tangle of worms or panel of listening ears. Jamie’s sound piece fills the small, narrow space and seems to bring the writhing mass of worms to life, featuring field recordings taken from the earth of the surrounding park, bringing into the gallery the sounds of organisms that lurk beneath our feet.
Following the hottest summer in living memory, where London’s real climate creeps ever closer to that of Ballard’s fictional London, Drowned Annihilation represents a turning backwards of ecological clocks, where time beats like a drum.
