Sensitive and precise, Julia McKinlay's show at Here Gallery was a strong and striking combination of drawing and installation. Hostile Places was an exhibition of her visual research and reflections on a trip to Yellow Stone Park, and the Grand Canyon. 

Drawings and photographs from museums and research expeditions form the starting point for my work. My work explores the subjects of the animal, geology, landscape in the form of sculpture and drawings. I spent last July travelling through America hiking in the National parks and taking photographs of the extreme environments that I visited from deserts and canyons to mountains and glaciers. I was particularly interested in the geysers, fumaroles and bubbling mud pots at Yellowstone National Park, the wildlife that has adapted to live there and the structures that have formed as a result of the build up of minerals. I was fascinated by the bacteria blankets; colonies of bacteria that live in a flat, layered carpet like structure in the pools around geysers, which have incredibly intense colours.

The body of work that I have developed for this exhibition is in response to the harshness of the environment in Yellowstone, which has a unique situation on a volcanic caldera within a mountain range. Yellowstone’s altitude, the thinness of the earths crust in that area, and the channel of moisture sweeping in to the mountains from the Pacific Ocean have made it one of the most difficult places in the world for wildlife to survive. My work usually takes the form of large-scale sculptural installations, however because my focus has been details such as the colours and textures of the bacterial pools, the work is mainly in the form of drawings. I create objects that seek to combine the man-made with the organic. Gloss paint, enamel, and plastics are combined with wood, and natural fibres create a tension between the industrial and the natural.