Lower Gallery Spotlight

Edward Burtynsky: Western Australia

This aerial photograph captures another face of the Murrin Murrin mining operation in Western Australia-a site where nickel and cobalt are extracted from lateritic ore through high-pressure acid leaching. The image shows the overflow zone of a tailings pond, where liquified waste settles in vast engineered basins. The dramatic sweep of red at the top edge-like ink bleeding across parchment-is not natural pigment but the signature of oxidized iron suspended in slurry.

Beneath it, pale grey and violet zones emerge as dried sediments, cracked by cycles of exposure and desiccation. The terrain appears painterly, almost cosmic in its visual complexity. Yet whatwe see here is industrial residue-the aftermath of global demand for electric vehicle batteries, stainless steel, and other technologies dependent on nickel and cobalt.

In Murrin Murrin Tailings Pond #3, Burtynsky continues his long engagement with the paradoxof beauty and devastation. The image seduces with its colour and composition, yet what lies below is a cautionary landscape. The work invites a deeper reflection on what is extracted, what is discarded, and what remains visible-a surface witness to the hidden mechanics of modern consumption in the Anthropocene.

Viewed from above, this image of the Murrin Murrin nickel and cobalt operation reveals a surreal interplay of saturated crimson and crystalline white—a tableau where industrial runoff meets geologic stillness. The intense colouration is not a Photoshop filter, but the actual hue of processed tailings: highly acidic waste byproducts laced with iron oxides and residual compounds from ore refinement.

Situated in Western Australia’s Goldfields region, Murrin Murrin is one of the largest producers of lateritic nickel and cobalt in the Southern Hemisphere—critical materials in the global battery supply chain. The vivid red tones signal the presence of oxidized iron, while the cracked textures and leached-out fringes at the bottom of the frame indicate cycles of evaporation and chemical deposition.

In Murrin Murrin Tailing #1, Burtynsky isolates this unsettling beauty, transforming environmental toxicity into lyrical abstraction. There are echoes here of his past engagements with mining waste—from the tailings rivers in Canada to potash lakes in the United States—but with a distinctly new palette. As with much of his recent work, this image forces viewers to reconcile the visual seduction of the surface with the deeper ecological consequences of what lies beneath.

Shell Beach #5 is perhaps the most abstract and painterly of this series, where the shell beds at Shark Bay twist into branching, root-like forms that hover between geological and biological registers.

The fine gradations of white, grey, and black evoke aerial views of river deltas, the vascular structures of lungs, or coral-networks shaped by flow, resistance, and diffusion. This image underscores Burtynsky's instinct for finding visual patterns in systems both organic and industrial. But here, there are no machines, no tailings or toxins-only nature's patient choreography of wind, wave, and tide. The white branches splayed across the frame are the result of shifting shells and sediment disturbed by seasonal flows. The contrasting dark zones are microbial mats-ancient lifeforms that not only stain the surface, but also contribute to the Bay's unique ecological profile.

Shark Bay's Shell Beach is more than a visual marvel: it's a living archive of biological resilience. The site forms part of one of the most significant marine ecosystems in the world. In rendering it from the air, Burtynsky turns its surface into metaphor-showing that the same principles shaping industrial landscapes also animate nature, only at vastly different speeds.

This image, taken above the Kambalda Nickel Mine's tailings pond in Western Australia, reveals the waste byproduct of nickel extraction - a slurry of fine particulates deposited across a containment field. The circular basin and extending causeway seen from above appear as abstract gestures, echoing forms in painting or land art.

Kambalda has been a key site for nickel mining since the 1960s, part of the resource-rich Goldfields region. In this photograph, Edward Burtynsky turns the consequences of industrial activity into an image of unsettling beauty. The radiating textures of sediment and mineral staining recall both topographical maps and biological growth.

Like his early images of Sudbury's tailings fields or the salt pans in the Australian interior, Burtynsky invites viewers to find formal elegance in environmental scars. But beneath the surface aesthetics lies a deeper commentary on material dependency-here, on the global appetite for nickel, crucial to stainless steel and battery production. The image asks what lies beneath our technologies, and what remains behind when extraction is done.

At first glance, Worsley Alumina Tailings #1 appears almost volcanic-an eruption of scorched matter from a central pit. But this image, taken above the Worsley alumina refinery in Western Australia, documents a tailings deposit site where the waste from bauxite processing fans outward in engineered furrows. These radial lines are the imprints of earth-moving equipment, pushing caustic red mud into sculpted containment fields.

The composition centres around a darkened void - a pooling area where discharged slurry accumulates before it is spread across the tailings field. The intense colouration results from iron oxides, the same pigments found in ochres and laterites, intensified here by chemical treatment and exposure. This site is part of the broader aluminum production cycle, in which bauxite ore is refined into alumina and ultimately smelted into aluminum metal. The byproduct - highly alkaline and hazardous - must be stored indefinitely.

In this image, Burtynsky captures the engineered landscape as both system and spectacle. The lines, though made by machines, echo the growth patterns of roots or the detonation rings of an explosion. It is a portrait of control and consequence - where human order meets geological scale, and the cost of consumption is etched into the land itself.

This image, taken above the Alcoa Kwinana Alumina Refinery reveals the vast painterly abstraction of a tailings field-where the residual red mud from bauxite processing is deposited. The high-contrast bands of rust, cream, and charcoal grey result from the Bayer process, in which bauxite ore is refined into alumina (aluminum oxide), a precursor to aluminum metal. What we see here is industrial residue: caustic, mineral-rich sludge sculpted by wind, water, and heavy machinery.

In Kwinana Alumina Tailing #1, Burtynsky turns the detritus of extraction into a formal study of colour, texture, and surface movement. The curves of truck routes, the layering of discharged materials, and the lone wedge of undisturbed vegetation at center create an unlikely visual harmony - both beautiful and disturbing.

This site builds on Burtynsky's decades-long investigation into landscapes altered by resource economies. Like his earlier views of tailings ponds in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, or the more recent copper and cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this image confronts viewers with the scale of waste hidden behind everyday materials. Here, the sublime and the toxic converge-asking us to consider what is sacrificed in the transformation of raw earth into thesleek surfaces of modern life.

In Shell Beach #1, Edward Burtynsky captures the delicate meeting point between terrestrial build up and marine dissolution at Shark Bay’s famous Shell Beach—a 120-kilometre stretch of coastline formed almost entirely from Fragum erugatum (a small species of cockle) shell fragments. From above, the beach’s lime-white deposit appears like a glacier melting into a turquoise sea.

This image emphasizes the geological patience of accumulation: over 4,000 years, billions of tiny shells have built up in drifts up to 10 metres deep. The white crest at centre—almost dune-like—is formed where shells are bulldozed or compacted by natural movement and wind, slowly reshaped by tidal rhythms. Unlike the industrial sites that dominate much of Burtynsky’s oeuvre, this image of Shell Beach represents a landscape where human intervention is minimal, and natural forces dominate. Still, its fragility is ever-present; this UNESCO-listed marine reserve is under threat from warming seas, rising salinity, and broader climate disruptions.

Here, abstraction and ecology meet—a reminder that nature, too, creates monumental formsover time, but without the heavy hand of machinery. Burtynsky, like other subjects in his evolving Tribute to Nature series, invites us to consider beauty born not of violence, but of time, repetition, and accumulation.