Crystal Bennes’s practice is grounded in long-term projects which foreground archival research, durational fieldwork and material experimentation. Recent bodies of work include an ongoing photographic exploration of an artificial island in Sweden created entirely out of radioactive waste from industrially-produced synthetic fertiliser; a series of hand-woven Jacquard wall hangings created by translating an entire computer punchcard programme from CERN into weaving instructions for a Jacquard loom as a feminist statement on the gender politics of science and computing histories past and present; and the creation of a weed garden connected to a particular nineteenth-century myth of unintentional plant migration from Italy to Denmark.

Crystal Bennes lives and works in Edinburgh. Recent exhibitions include: Hermes and the Veil (2021), Gallery North, Newcastle; Parallel Crossings (2019), STUK Arts Centre, Leuven; and FAKE (2018) Science Gallery, Dublin. Her first photobook—charting connecting threads between the U.S.’s nuclear weapons research, women programmers, the invention of modern computers, and nuclear colonialism—is forthcoming from The Eriskay Connection in 2022. She recently completed an AHRC-funded practice-based PhD in fine art at Northumbria University researching the histories and uses of gendered representations of nature in the sciences, and exploring feminist critiques of physics.

Image: O (copper, cotton, cobalt, crude, naphtha, bauxite, palm), Installation, including bespoke table, conservation boxes, constructed archive, Financial Times pink paint and divination robe – with scheduled performances, 2024; Pecunia non olet [“money has no smell”] Machine-woven Jacquard tapestry, 2024 (photography by Sally Jubb).