Earthling exhibition explores worldbuilding through sci-fi and digital realms at Loughborough gallery

Modern Painters New Decorators in Loughborough presents Earthling, an exhibition featuring ten artists exploring worldbuilding concepts developed during COVID-19 lockdowns. The show originated from online discussions among gallery members about alternate universes in science fiction, video games, and fantasy. Amber Jesson contributes Nine Maidens (2021), a series of pinhole camera photographs depicting standing stones that reference Neolithic astronomical tools while capturing impermanent natural elements through motion blur. James Milner's Pregnant Homo/Homo Preggo arranges votive objects on a floor photograph, creating a microcosm of queer bodies with gentle violence that evokes the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage. Ama Dogbe presents Pulled, an interactive video featuring entangled stick figures as hieroglyphic symbols celebrating intimate connections despite physical distance. David John Scarborough's White Castle animation uses stock nature footage and Disney concept art to create synthetic landscapes accompanied by ambient MIDI soundtracks, mimicking the perpetual stasis of online lo-fi streams. The exhibition examines humanity from an outsider perspective during a period of social isolation and domestic confinement. Rather than constructing entirely new worlds, these artists map familiar natural, social, corporeal, and digital spheres. Earthling runs through July 31 at the artist-led gallery and studios in Loughborough.