Drift Thrust Flow, 2025
350cm (L) x 306cm (H) x 110cm (W)
Materials: PLUTO pipeline, shingle, wheatgrass, digitally printed nylon
Exhibition: Landscapes of Hope with Susie Olczak
Curated by: Becca Pelly-Fry
School Gallery Folkstone - Summer 2025
University of Gloucester- Autumn 2025
Press Release
SCHOOL is pleased to present Landscapes of Hope; a two-person show of works by Rachael Champion and Susie Olczak, curated by Becca Pelly-Fry. Both artists transmit ideas of local hopefulness in the context of the widespread climate challenges we all face, through stories of adaptation. Olczak’s recent research in Latin America considers local rituals and routines of life as the foundations for making engaging stories in extreme environments. Champion’s work addresses the corporeality of the materials we extract, transform and consume, and how these actions affect the physical characteristics of landscapes and ecosystems. Following a research trip to Dungeness earlier this year, considering local stories, customs and rituals, the exhibition is a visual experiment in responding to landscape, exploring community resilience and adaptability. Located in a ‘borderland’ territory, both a coastal location and a frontier town facing Europe, Landscapes of Hope offers ways of navigating the most pertinent and challenging issues of our time. Both artists are interested in overturning ideas of human supremacy, encouraging a return to nature-led intelligence and tending to the pockets of hope that exist within hostile conditions.
Rachael Champion’s installation, Drift Thrust Flow, features a three-metre section of covert Allied WWII infrastructure sitting amongst a bed of shingle, interspersed with blades of grass. Above hang two pennants depicting collaged textures of wings of both birds and invertebrates observed at Dungeness. Drift Thrust Flow characterises aspects of this extraordinary paradoxical landscape, Europe’s largest expanse of vegetative shingle, where wartime industry, energy infrastructure and a rich fragile ecology coexist on a stark elemental headland.
During World War II, Dungeness was central to Operation PLUTO (PipeLine Under The Ocean) — a top-secret Allied engineering feat that pumped fuel under the English Channel to supply the forces after the D-Day landings. The PLUTO pipelines were laid across the seabed from sites like Dungeness to France, ensuring a steady flow of petrol to advancing Allied troops. Remnants of this history — rusted pipework, concrete blocks, military infrastructure — remain embedded in the landscape, quietly monumental and half-reclaimed by nature. This particular section of pipeline is on loan from The Pilot Inn at Dungeness, where it is displayed amongst other decaying relics of local maritime history.