With its cascading eroded rivulets and slopes lit by raking light, Conor Clarke’s majestic photographic composition pays tribute to notions of the picturesque and the sublime, like the painted landscapes in this room. However, as the title reveals, the origins of this work are in industrial Germany, where Clarke spent ten years from 2009. As she explained at the time, “I photograph piles of sand and dirt from the streets and construction sites of Berlin. I then select and re-combine these objects into landscape compositions based on [the] picturesque ideal.” This work is from her Scenic Potential series, a collection she described as “landscapes of contradiction”, which was awarded best series at the London-based Renaissance Photography Prize in 2015.

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)