Copper Ouroboros
May 23-24, 2025
Solo Exhibition by Christopher Lynn, for Serva Pool Flux 2025
In the inaugural HPG Serva Pool Flux exhibition, Utah-based artist Christopher Lynn reflected on themes of labor and a troubling legacy of mining and capitalism. The exhibition, which included video, sculpture, painting, and sound, “Copper Ouroboros”, was on view for one night and one day, with an opening in conjunction with the reception for “inauditx (unheard)” in the HP Gallery on Friday, May 23rd, from 7-10:30 pm.
The Ringing Rocks, located in Butte, Montana, “sing” when struck with hammers. This lithophonic phenomenon is only found in a few spots on the planet, and the artist Christopher Lynn made the journey to Butte in 2023 to witness and record it. Those recordings found a home when Lynn learned of “New Songs for Butte Mining Camp,” a songbook for protesting miners published in 1917 when a clash between companies and workers came to a head. In his video works, Lynn depicts the rocks and nearby landscape, and overlays those images with sheets from the little, yellow songbook that gave miners a single voice as they marched. Videos also show vignettes of Butte history around mining, union organizing, Evel Knievel, corporate assassinations, and the death of snow geese in the Berkeley Pit – a defunct mining pit near the Rocks that has killed thousands of birds through its tainted waters. A motion-activated sound installation also plays the protest songs mixed with samples from the Rocks – as if the earth sings for the miners long buried, warding off any capitalists. Paintings made of sulfuric acid and copper oxide reference the heavy metals and mining byproducts present in the Pit, and the project continues to evolve and grow through sound and performance.
