The Wastelands, are series of large scale ethereal panoramas of salt marshes, filled with bubbles rising up foreshadowing rising sea levels.   The Wastelands have been shown at; The RSA; ArtGene; The Edinburgh Festival 2025 Summerhall Arts exhibition; and is current showing at  the Kirkudbright Galleries until May 2026. The Wastelands is an ongoing rolling project, intended to photograph salt marshes from all over the UK as well as abroad.

BACKGROUND

In the 17th Century word ‘Wasteland’ was initially introduced to apply to salt-marshes and fens, indicating land that was deemed to be useless, neither suitable for farming or building. Huge areas of ‘The Fens’ were subsequently drained, turning swampland into fields for agriculture, so ’improving’ on nature.

These same wastelands can now be seen in a different light – invaluable ecosystems that can sequester as much as 50 times the amount of carbon per hectare as tropical forests, literally absorbing our waste.

Climate change, industrialisation, urbanisation and rising sea levels, have put the marshes under threat, so much so, that they are now in danger of becoming a carbon source instead of a carbon sink, releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.  

THE WASTELANDS

The symbolism of the bubble references Dutch Vanitas Paintings, signifying the fragility of life, and it made sense to take this still-life imagery out into these delicate ecosystems on the verge of destruction. Whilst the bubbles create a sense of playfulness and wonder, they also give physical form to the tons of carbon released back into our atmosphere as the marshes erode, forshadowing rising sea levels and the marshes permanent submersion under water.

WORKING PRACTICE

To create these images, actual bubbles are released into the landscape during high tide on location and photographed in situ. Minimal post production is applied to the images, and no AI or special effects are used.  The images are very high resolution in order to create large scale exhibition pieces up to 10 meters in length.

REVIEW

‘Van Heek’s large scale photographs – the biggest a staggeringly otherworldly nine by three meters – capture the distinctive low profiles of a salt marsh, high-contrast black and white casting the lips and hags into stark relief, with distant sea meeting clouds in shades of white and grey.  Each photograph is absolutely alive with thousands of bubbles that drift and scatter, spheres of light and scales. They bring levity and playfulness and a magical, mystical quality to every image, asking the viewer to see the salt marsh with curiosity and wonder. But they also give physical form to the tons of sequestered carbon leached from the silt as marshes erode, suggesting a sadder, colder destination – for both the marshes and ourselves – to be underwater, marsh and man alike, claimed by rising seas while the last of our oxygen is parsed from our lungs. Van Heek drowns us in these moments, holding us beneath the surface, obliging us to to connect the fate of the marshes to our own’. 

by Simon Sylvester, Corridor 8.  (full review; https://corridor8.co.uk/article/deluge-oscar-van-heek-linde-ex-and-dana-olarescu/)