Britannia is an ongoing research project centred on the former Britannia copper mine, located on the traditional territory of the Squamish Nation in British Columbia. Operating from 1904 to 1974, the mine transformed the surrounding mountain and watershed through an extensive infrastructure of tunnels, mineral processing, and water movement. Britannia now occupies an unsettled terrain between industrial ruins, historical preservation, and the ongoing work of environmental remediation.

Water continues to carry the mine long after extraction has ceased. Moving through exposed sulphide minerals, subterranean passages, creeks, and treatment infrastructure, it circulates the chemical afterlife of copper through the landscape. 

Acid mine drainage forms when sulphide-bearing minerals exposed by mining react with air and water, producing acidic runoff that carries dissolved metals through the landscape. At Britannia, it persists as an active hydrological condition, moving through fractured rock, subterranean tunnels, creeks, and treatment infrastructure before entering Átl’ḵa7tsem / Howe Sound. Along this passage, water crosses mineral, biological, and technological thresholds: from mineral surfaces and fungal and microbial communities to the tissues of Pacific herring, salmon, rockfish, sea stars, harbour seals, and other marine life. 

The water also passes through the threshold of the machine. Within the Epicor water treatment plant, acidity is neutralized with lime, while dissolved metals precipitate, gather through the addition of polymer, and settle into sludge.

In my material experiments, water collected from a creek near the mine is atomized through DIY mist apparatuses. The water enters the gallery as vapor, producing an ephemeral atmosphere before settling again as mineral and metallic deposits on floral foam surfaces. What was dissolved in the stream returns as residue, translating an otherwise dispersed chemical process into a visible trace.

Project site: https://britannia.cargo.site/