Ryan’s research-based practice explores the Ecology of Post-Industrial sites through digital surfaces, using Post-Photography and experimental techniques to collate materials across time. Through extended occupations of environments, Ryan collaborates with their inhabitants to create work that has been co-authored by habitats and those that live within them. Strictly working with local environments, or those accessible by public transport, their representations of environmental changes are crafted to avoid further damages, creating work whilst minimising emissions and energy consumption. As one of the first certified Climate Aware Photographers, his practice is always evolving to protect the environments that he occupies, using digital technology to duplicate lifeforms, habitats, and their interactions, rather than extracting samples and causing environmental disturbances. Often working within communities, he strives to create inclusive environments for students of all ages to learn together, and participate in works through workshops, one-to-one tuition, and collaborative ways of making together. Ryan’s most recent project, “Entanglement”, exhibited in June 23, saw the artist fabricating a fossil record for the living world, creating objects that visualised a potential future, where plant life was only visible by its ancient remains upon the debris of human industries. Beginning with a collaboration with the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, they participated in survey days across Cumbria, cataloguing plant life and marine life across post-industrial sites in Whitehaven and Glenridden. These digital samples were given virtual bodies, with the artist engineering environments to facilitate their interaction with virtual versions of their environments.
