Extraction explores how energy systems shape culture, land and belief.
Extraction explores how energy systems shape culture, land and belief, through work by artists Carol Rhodes, john gerrard, Marguerite Humeau, Siobhan McLaughlin and John Latham.
Their practices are set in dialogue with Jupiter’s own layered landscape, where traces of the shale gas industry, North Sea petroleum economy and contemporary renewables are simultaneously visible.
Rather than presenting energy history as linear progress, Extraction reveals a repetitive cycle built on belief, optimism and inevitability. Each energy era produces material wealth, cultural identity and technological confidence. Each eventually becomes residue, memory or monument. Debates around energy transition are dominated by technological narratives and political urgency. This exhibition instead investigates and reflects upon the emotional and ideological structure of energy systems, considering labour, identity and landscape without nostalgia or triumphalism.
After the erosion of energy systems, what remains is infrastructure, waste, altered land and symbolic fragments. Jupiter’s own landscape is also part of the exhibition – walking around the sculpture park, visitors can encounter views as they gaze in various directions out from the the artland; the historic shale bings – Scotland’s first oil industry – and the landing site for the Forties oil pipeline out to the North Sea, as well as the solar-field which powers Jupiter’s site.
Extraction is not a survey, commemoration or an environmental warning, but a lens offering clarity on how societies build and unbuild worlds through energy. It invites the viewer to recognise themselves inside a cycle rather than at its conclusion, to reconsider progress, permanence and the future.

Get a National Art Pass and explore Jupiter Artland
You'll see more art and your membership will help museums across the UK
National Art Pass offers available at Jupiter Artland
Visitor information
Address
Bonnington House Steadings, Wilkieston, Edinburgh, Midlothian, EH27 8BY
01506 889900
Opening times
April to October – Open Every Day
November to April – Open Thursday to Sunday
Closed in January
Opening hours are 10am until 5pm, Monday to Sunday during our open season (last entry at 3pm).


