The MEP Studio presents Faultlines, a photography project by Martine Dawson focusing on houses in Butte, a former mining town in Montana. In these domestic spaces, the traces of a landscape shaped by extraction and the mythology of westward conquest remain quietly present. Nestled in the heart of Montana, Butte rose to prominence in the late 19th century through copper mining, which profoundly transformed its landscape and structured every aspect of social life. Today, the town seems suspended between memory and the present. Shifting from photographs of exteriors to interiors, details and textures. Faultlines reveals the home as a space where different timeframes overlap. Pairing contemporary images with archival material, the exhibition frames these dwellings as surfaces of memory, where mining history, collective imagination, and present-day ways of living intersect.
Martine Dawson, Faultlines, 2022 - Courtesy of the artist and MEP gallery