Urthworks draws on a trilogy of films by Ben Rivers imagining the future of a planet at three stages after environmental collapse. Working with 16mm film and digital imaging technology, Rivers captures extraordinary real locations in Japan, Tuvalu, Lanzarote, Arizona, the Mendip Hills, and Somerset as well as fabricated environments. Observational images are interspersed with fantastically costumed characters and uncanny ruins. Through these eerily resonant threads, Rivers forges a compelling blend of document and fiction which presents us with forgotten ideas of the future, stranger-than-fiction images of the present, and elemental visions of the distant future that seem to resemble the deep past. While epic in scope, the narrative that unfolds is shaped around tactile and human detail, suggesting an intimate, sensory account of vast transformations in society and nature.

This artist’s book takes the form of a visual novel, interwoven with texts by acclaimed sci-fi author Mark von Schlegell expanding upon the worlds and characters of the images. The book’s title references Urth, the Norse goddess of fate, as well as Brian Aldiss’s 1965 dystopian novel Earthworks.