12/11/2026 - More Than Human

11th November 2026

Exhibition Visit: Being Human: Entangled Light

Yesterday I took the slightly long drive west to Salford to visit the eco-experimental photographic portrait work on display in the garden space of Islington Mill, by photographer Helen McGhie and art scientist Anthony Hall.

Alongside experiencing the exhibition and seeing the work first-hand within the garden space, the artists hosted a round table discussion about the work, specifically around soil sustainability and its use as a form of power supply for photographic technologies.

The exhibition was part of a bigger artistic collective, the Being Human Festival, which is running between the 5th and 14th November across thirty-eight towns and cities within the UK. Entangled Light is part of this festival and is hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University.

'Entangled Light is a pop-up outdoor exhibition of photographs made using light generated by soil. Creating a garden-powered, or ‘more-than-human’, photography studio, communities in Salford built ‘mud batteries’ from recycled materials to imagine new energy systems during lead-in workshops led by Antony Hall and Helen McGhie.

Visit Islington Mill and Incredible Edible Salford’s community garden to discover studio photographs displayed in plant pots and hanging from balconies, including a series of portraits by photographer Helen McGhie and still life images created by Year 5 pupils from St Philip’s CE Primary School, members of Islington Mill Art Academy and local residents.

Visitors can learn how living soil can generate energy, experiment with a soil-powered light, and imagine what the future might look like using alternative energy sources.'

As the synopsis suggests, the exhibition was very much in touch with my own practice, and I was therefore really excited to see how both artists had worked with western England soils, and more specifically urban soils, to generate enough electrical output to power LED bulbs. Alongside this interest, I wanted to listen to both Helen and Anthony and find out a little more about the purpose and aims behind the work. Anthony Hall is also an artist I have been following over the past few years within my research, particularly because of my interest in his wonderful scientific methodologies and experimental approaches to working with energy.

As I arrived in Salford, I found the Mill tucked down a slight side alley, and I knew I had arrived when I saw some simple signage stuck to the inside of the windows. It made me smile immediately: ‘Explore Batteries Made From Soil’. Well, isn’t that just the invite I needed? When you read that, you must think, surely that sounds crazy, how can soil be a battery and/or produce energy? I enjoyed this very raw, Word document-style signage, but also its hook to passers-by, hopefully enticing curious minds to visit the show and discover the potential of soil for themselves.

After arriving, I had the chance to speak with Helen, Anthony and some of the other guests. Everyone was lovely and pleasant, and there was a collaborative aura about the group, with people seemingly wanting to engage with the curiosity around soil that I had mentioned. I was, however, a little early, and so took my time, after getting a coffee, to look around the pop-up photography exhibition.

What stood out first was the industrial quality of the Mill garden: red brick, slightly grimy, not particularly well-kept, with a rough garden approach that felt very much like an urban backyard. I do enjoy how certain spaces can be used as exhibition environments, and I thought this space worked particularly well for such a show. Within the yard and garden was a host of plants, shrubs and foliage, some edible and some hearty and stubborn, the latter ready to endure a cold winter. The edible plants were unfortunately coming to the end of their season.

Within this slightly unkempt garden, and through the sporadic positioning of plant pots and DIY planters, were portrait images of mostly female subjects alongside organic materials, planted into several pots and scattered around the space. Each portrait had a black or dark background, with the subject illuminated against it. There was a ghost-like quality to this illumination, one that evidenced a slow shutter speed, as some subjects appeared slightly out of focus, perhaps through an intentional movement.

The photographs almost hid themselves throughout the garden, only revealing themselves as my eyes moved around the foliage, seeking out the imagery. This was a wonderfully playful curatorial approach, asking the viewer to look and search, to interact not only with the work but also with the plants, shrubs and foliage. It connected the viewer to the non-human on an intimate level, asking us to take time and tune into a collaborative human and non-human environment, a small plant ecology. Even when the portrait and material images revealed themselves between the foliage, I was not simply drawn away from the non-human. Instead, I became curious about the entanglement between portrait and plant. How and why did these materials sit together so well? What relationship was being created between the photographic subject, the plant and the soil surrounding them?

It was through Helen and Anthony’s round table talk that they went into the intricacies of the exhibition. The soil from the urban garden had been used to make earth batteries, or ‘mud batteries’ as they referred to them, which in turn powered an LED light used to illuminate the subjects in the imagery. Helen did explain that the exposure was around sixty seconds. The resulting photographs were then returned to the soil, positioned within it almost like a cathode or anode probe set within an earth battery cell.

The method of creation and output therefore had a full-circle approach, one that felt both experimental and somewhat sustainable. Tending and feeding the garden and soil allowed microorganisms to live and evolve within their communities, contributing to the energetic potential of the soil. In return, this produced an energy capable of powering LEDs, which then illuminated the photographic subjects. There was something wonderful about this collaboration between earthly materiality and human reciprocity: an understanding of care, tenderness and potential.

As the discussion continued, Helen and Anthony asked participants to share their thoughts on the show through three different areas: energy, photography and the exhibition itself. I approached the first two, sharing my thoughts on urban soils and the invasive human elements that could potentially play a negative role within the soil’s energetic output. And yet, despite these potential complications, the artists had managed to channel enough energy from the soil to complete a successful photographic work.

Further conversations developed around soil care and the microorganisms that remain invisible to us, alongside honest conversations about not fully knowing the potential of soil. This uncertainty was particularly interesting to me. There is something important about acknowledging that we do not always know what is happening beneath our feet, or exactly what these materials might be capable of. We can measure, test and experiment, but there remains a level of uncertainty within the soil that cannot always be fully translated through scientific measurement.

I enjoyed this round table discussion, particularly the way it brought together thoughts and ideas around the collaborative relationship between the human and non-human. It highlighted the possibilities of renewable partnerships while revealing new ways of working with a material that is so openly available to us. For me, Entangled Light offered another example of how soil can move beyond being something simply observed or represented, instead becoming an active material within the photographic process itself.