Tucked away in the student-strewn New Friend’s Colony market, Gallery Espace is a refreshing double-level artistic and creative space.

Opened in 1989, the gallery is known for a slew of thoughtful and cutting-edge shows – their 2009 video art series, for example, that showcased this genre every Wednesday evening and culminated in a massive video art show was an inspiring and exciting initiative. They’ve also featured shows by MF Husain, Abir Karmarkar, Nilima Sheikh, Vibha Galhotra and Manjit Bawa, among many others. An artist who regularly exhibits his work here is Ravi Agarwal, environmental activist, photographer and leader of the NGO Toxic Link.

“An Other Place”, his 2008 solo show, featured a series of photographs that touched on various environmental concerns – Agarwal placed a disjointed human mannequin within desolate outdoor spaces that served to highlight the disconnect between man and his surroundings.

In his current exhibition, Flux, “Forest Morning” captures a similar figure lying on the ground, draped in a white sheet, – conjuring up notions of danger and death, a corpse abandoned after an act of violence. Yet the violence, as Agarwal goes on to show, has been directed not at the figure but at nature.

The rest of the images stand as quiet, accusatory testaments to how we have abused our world. “After the Flood (Yamuna Series)”, for example, are intense black and white close-ups of a cracked, parched patch of ground – the soil is shrunken, starved of life and littered with sunken plastic cups. The monochrome serves to rob the photos of any signs of vibrancy and hope.

Especially evocative is the picture of a warped wooden door lying like a fossil on the soil as well as the one of stones wrapped in wire (to probably serve as an embankment). This hopeless sterility is mirrored in “Forest Morning 2,” a picture of the skeletal remains of an animal on a dry, withered forest floor and in “Dislocation Site,” an image of a single tree in a muddy construction area.

More subtle, and hence more disturbing, is the “Sewage Pond” series, photographs of what at first appears to be a pretty rural landscape of shrubs and a water body. This is deceptive of course, considering, as the titles reveal, the “pond” is actually dirty, stagnant drain water with what could be faeces floating in it. A single poignant line is pasted across the photograph – “I Produce Nature”. Finally, like criminals brought to court, is the “Tar Machine” series – photos of large, industrial mechanisms that churn tar standing on a newly-paved road.

The works in the exhibition are far from “pretty” and Agarwal has not been subtle about getting his message across – sometimes, that is the only way people will stand up and take notice.