The Properties of Darkness

The Prop­er­ties of Darkness 

28^th August — 18^th Sep­tem­ber 2025

Sov­er­eign Design House, Quenn St South Annexe, Hud­der­s­field, HD1 3DR

Exhi­bi­tion Open­ing Times: Tues — Sat, 10am — 3pm

As part of a Cul­tures of Cli­mate res­i­den­cy pro­gramme, Haya-Baviera, Lucas and Whit­tle have respond­ed to col­lec­tions held at Her­itage Quay and the West York­shire Archives Ser­vice, devel­op­ing threads of research that, through sus­tained dia­logue, weave a net­work of mean­ing between the result­ing art­works for their exhi­bi­tion at Sov­er­eign Design House.

Haya-Baviera’s work responds to archival mate­ri­als dat­ing from the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion to the 1980s. Dur­ing her Cul­ture of Cli­mate res­i­den­cy, her atten­tion has focussed on the inter­sec­tion of med­i­cine, nat­ur­al sci­ences and beliefs. She has stud­ied med­i­c­i­nal recipes, zool­o­gy books and agri­cul­ture guides with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in the exploita­tion of for­eign lands, the use of non-native species and their impact on life. Under­cur­rents of anguish and hope infuse her work, bridg­ing tem­po­ral­i­ties that shift any clear demar­ca­tions between past and present. Haya-Bavier­a’s work is akin to myth mak­ing, as it devis­es sym­bol­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tions that ask ques­tions about our trou­bled times.

Lucas often engages with archival mate­r­i­al through the geo­log­i­cal land­scapes they ref­er­ence, as a process of mak­ing is ini­ti­at­ed through site vis­its and her inves­ti­ga­tions of asso­ci­at­ed objects and sto­ries. In the West York­shire Archive Ser­vice, Lucas came across a report pub­lished as part of the Thorn­hill Col­liery Explo­sion Inquest in 1893, fol­low­ing a gas explo­sion at Combs Pit in Dews­bury, in which 139 men and boys lost their lives. Using an archival pho­to­graph, in addi­tion to a wealth of inter­re­lat­ed mate­r­i­al found at Her­itage Quay, Lucas has been explor­ing the site of the pit as it is today, feel­ing her way through the wild under­growth that has tak­en over this land­scape of trauma. 

Whittle’s work gath­ers many sources to con­struct a mul­ti­lay­ered ter­rain of accu­mu­lat­ed time and the residue of our being with­in it. In her works result­ing from the res­i­den­cy, she pulls togeth­er frag­ments from pho­tographs from WW1 with images of ruins from Pom­pei; relo­cat­ing both in dark pine for­est, so togeth­er they form a site of rit­u­al and ruin from an immemo­r­i­al past. Com­bined with these, frag­ile post­cards depict­ing trees from pho­tographs of a tree plant­i­ng cer­e­mo­ny on a hous­ing estate in Dews­bury in 1962, become sou­venirs of these oblique acts, whilst wood­en pan­els inspired by a 1955 text on the ​‘Imi­ta­tion of Woods and Mar­bles’ depict fad­ing struc­tures in the land­scape, over­grown and falling into this lay­ered and unceas­ing nar­ra­tive of time.