Opens 13 June until 28 September 2025
Wild Places, 2001 © Lisl Ponger
From the series Life in Plastic, 2018 © Gulshan Khan.
A reclaimer at Robinson Deep landfill, Johannesburg’s largest landfill on June 29, 2018. Reclaimers complain of not having adequate protective clothing and as a result suffering infections and other health issues.
From the series Pang’Ono Pang’Ono, 2022 © Laura El-Tantawy.
Originally commissioned by WaterAid and Wimbledon Foundation.
Poisoned Futures? is an exhibition and public programme around climate change and sustainability. It is an invitation to join the conversation and consider how past industrial practices, colonial legacies and extractive mindsets continue to shape our present. It explores the environmental, political and emotional landscapes of the climate crisis.
This free exhibition features the works of three internationally acclaimed female photographers:
- Gulshan Khan
- Laura El-Tantawy
- Lisl Ponger
These award-winning artists explore the complex global entanglements of climate change, environmental justice and human survival. The exhibition challenges the idea that climate action is ever simple or consequence-free. While some communities celebrate small gains toward sustainability, others are paying the hidden costs – through exploitation, displacement or environmental destruction.
From speculative storytelling to radical repair, the programme looks beyond binary thinking. It challenges us to sit with complexity, to acknowledge the uneven impacts of climate change and to imagine a pluriverse – a world where many ways of living, knowing and healing can co-exist.
Poisoned Futures? is spread across three locations – the Hundred Heroines Photo Museum in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire; Miles Marling Field as well as being the first exhibition in the newly launched Art Garden, a vibrant space dedicated to showcasing contemporary art, in Mortimer Gardens.
Come and join us to celebrate the opening of this striking exhibition – 17:30 on Friday 13 June.
Opening Times
Museum: 11:00 – 16:00 Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays
Bonus open Sundays: 14th & 22nd June 2025
Other times by arrangement – email hello@hundredheroines.org
Mortimer Gardens & Miles Marling Field: 24/7
Participating Artists
Gulshan Khan is an independent South African photographer based in Johannesburg. Noted for her photojournalism work focused on social justice identity and human rights development, Gulshan’s work engages in multi-layered themes around representations of identities in South Africa which inform her visual practice.
Laura El-Tantawy is a British/Egyptian documentary photographer, book maker & educator. Investigating notions of home and belonging, she routinely approaches her work from a social and environmental sensibility drawing on her transatlantic background. Her visual explorations often intertwine moving images, sound, and personal narratives.
Lisl Ponger lives and works in Vienna, Austria. Her work concerns stereotypes, racism and the construction of the gaze. It is located at the interface between art, art history and ethnology in the mediums of photography, film, installation and text.
