Untitled (Coal) appropriates a reproduction of William Smith’s 1815 Geological Map, currently on display at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Cambridge. In this work, areas corresponding to coalfields, originally rendered through subtle tonal variations, are physically extracted and replaced with a dense black substance laced with coal dust. This gesture produces a series of delineated absences, transforming the map from a representational surface into a site of material intervention.
Through this process, coal is centralised as both subject and substance, collapsing distinctions between depiction and material reality. The map becomes a conduit for the geology it describes, re-inscribed through the very resource it once helped to locate. For Lucas, Smith’s map marks a historical shift in the perception of landscape, from a site of cultural and folkloric meaning to one understood through scientific classification and industrial potential. While the map remains a visually compelling record of Britain’s geological complexity, it also functions as a blueprint for extraction, embedding the language of geology into the strata beneath our feet and reshaping how land is known.
Documentation: Jules Lister