'Geometric Nature' by Lucy Hawthorne
‘Geometric Nature’. The title of this exhibition seems a contradiction in terms. Geometry and nature are frequently perceived as opposites and it seems odd that artists would want to depict the natural environment with such an unsympathetic human construct. Our relationship with nature is a conflicting one. We are dependent on it for our survival; we were born out of it and will rot in when we die; and yet we have a history of trying to control nature, fearing, loathing and conquering it. We build monuments in honour or defiance of it. We worship it but also destroy it. We build over it, and then try to imitate the natural landscape in our individual backyards. The five artists showcased in this exhibition use geometry and its associations in order to expose the contradictions that lie in this relationship that humans have with the natural environment.
Geometric Nature -room shotHumans have always tried to make order out of the perceived chaos of nature, and it is part of the human psyche to sort and categorise. In school we are taught theory on right angles, Pi and perfect cubes, and yet outside in nature, this same geometry hardly exists (an exception being crystals, for instance). Geometry is the symbol of humanity, the built environment, the artificial, manufacturing and civilisation, which distinguishes us from nature. Roads divide our cities into grids; buildings are stabilised by the known sturdy structure of the right angle; our houses at their simplest, are cubes with a triangle roof; we watch nature documentaries on rectangular television screens; and our breakfast comes out of angular cereal boxes and milk cartons. The materials used to build these structures, such as bricks, sheets of wood, metal and glass, are manufactured according to geometric principals. Even our art materials –paper, canvas, blocks of clay, LCD screens - come tainted with this artificial structure. This is so ingrained that how many people really notice that their drawing, their own work of personal expression, has already been restricted in this manner?
For artists, the landscape genre provides a challenge: how does one visually represent the natural environment? The intense relationship we have with the environment and the constructs imposed on the landscape means that it is not simply enough to attempt to recreate it figuratively. Contemporary interpretations of the natural environment have to go beyond the traditional, descriptive landscape painting, in which nature is observed through the rectangle of the picture plane.
Like all five artists showcased in Geometric Nature, Dean Chatwin’s work demonstrates alternative methods of depicting nature and our relationship with the environment. Rather than representing the landscape figuratively, Chatwin uses the materials and systems of nature itself, incorporating themes of order, repetition and control. His work Air Supply, an avenue of suspended tree cuttings, defies gravity, reasoning and nature. Each branch is attached to a lifeline – a small plastic water-filled bag, constantly bubbling with the air that is supplied through a thin plastic tube. Looking directly up at a bag, the raw marks of the severed wood are distorted by the bag’s bulbous shape. The viewer cannot help feeling empathy for these trees, which appear stunted and helpless
The cuttings are taken from a poplar tree, a hardy species that will often sprout leaves if fed water. Writing this essay prior to the exhibition however, with the knowledge that this exhibition is opening nearing the end of winter, it is impossible to know whether Chatwin’s work will become a leafy line of trees as with similar previous projects, or remain a skeletal line of naked branches.
The installation refers to the current water crisis in Australia. The regular and artificial spacing of the trees are akin to current farming methods or urban planning. However, it also conjures up far more sinister thoughts in the form of futuristic science processes, and warns of the uncertain future of the natural environment due to the destruction caused by human beings. Further afield are the associations with advancing scientific technologies, such as cloning and artificial reproduction, as if Chatwin cautions of the danger of attempting to play God, reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Despite the disturbing nature of his work however, he has concurrently created an element of humour in this work, as the ridiculousness of the situation cannot be ignored.
Chatwin 'Plantation' 2008Repetition also features in David Martin’s Arranging Clouds #1 in the form of a regulated grid of sky images, with each image capturing a single cloud against a blue sky background. Patterns emerge. In the top left hand corner of the grid for instance, multiples of fluffy grey clouds float against rich blues; then further down the rows, the clouds grow smaller into tiny wisps of white on lighter backgrounds. The varying colours of the sky and the shape of the clouds indicate that the individual images have been taken over many days, in various weathers and at different times of the day. The grid seems oppositional to the free flowing, unpredictable cloud masses, and also has the effect of abstracting these familiar images. The title - Arranging Clouds - hints at this contradiction and suggests an impossible task. Arranging clouds would surely signify the ultimate control of nature.
The grid is also present in Amanda Shone’s Liminal Place. The mountainous form shaped out of flyscreen looks as if it might have been developed in a three-dimensional mapping program, with the grid of the flyscreen following the peaks and valleys of an imaginary place. The banal material forms incredible shadows, with varied density, colour and transparency; it tricks your eyes, and as you move around the work, the mountains appear to jump and distort. In contrast, the shadow of the hanging work, an unmoving two-dimensional copy, differs again in tone and intensity.
The materials used in Liminal Place are significant. Flyscreen, which is usually stretched over the square frames of doors or windows, is designed to protect us, to keep nature out. It is a liminal material, in that the mesh exists both on the inside and outside of our dwellings, a barrier between the internal and external. Despite its vertical hanging, we view the mountains from a bird’s eye view, with the result that the screen exists in a liminal state, mapping the surface between us in the sky, and the earth below.
Shone’s work is one of contrasting and contradictory materials and ideas. The greys of the flyscreen are juxtaposed with the shocking red thread that holds the work together, and the ends of the thread hang untidily against the relatively orderly grid of the flyscreen. We might imagine that the mesh peaks are towering or monumental land formations as described by an abstract computer program, and yet the materials – sewn thread and flyscreen – with their connotations of the domestic convey, a more intimate feel.
David Keeling’s Art Will Conquer Nature paintings draw our attention to the ingrained Western tradition of representing the landscape through the geometric picture plane. Art Will Conquer Nature: Picnic in Arcadia depicts a framed image of a lush outdoor picnic setting within a comparatively hostile desert landscape. The image within the painting appears to be a tapestry, which is raised above the low horizon by an ornate stand. The framed tapestry is bordered by a brooding sky, with threateningly dark clouds lurking at the top of the painting. In contrast, the sky within the tapestry is blissfully clear, flowers bloom in the foreground, and the trees curve politely towards the sides of the tapestry, framing the perfectly still lake. Three figures enjoy this idyllic setting, and while Keeling clearly references the long tradition of picnic painting, the figures are dressed in contemporary clothing, which seems at odds with the historical composition.
The pastoral paradise of Arcadia depicted in the tapestry is similarly at odds with the inhospitable landscape in which it sits, and as a result, Keeling’s painting seems disturbingly strange. The centred tapestry dominates the painting, and yet the shadow of the stand and tapestry cast onto the desert ground indicates that this relatively inhospitable environment is the more authentic ‘nature’. At the same time however, Art Will Conquer Nature: Picnic in Arcadia challenges us to consider whether any framed landscape could be labelled ‘real’. The title also gives us a hint as to an additional function of the frame; for while humans have a history of trying to conquer nature, by placing an image or painting of nature within a frame, nature is contained and poses no threat.
Like Keeling, Anne Mestitz has drawn upon idealistic representations of the natural environment. Her work Swatch Australia – a pun on ‘watch Australia’ - encourages the viewer to sit in front of the television screen and appreciate the swatches of ‘nature’ colours that she has sourced from a DVD entitled Nature Australia. This narrationless visual muzak showcasing sweeping vistas of untainted Australian wilderness, and conveniently failing to include a single human being or reference, has been reduced to abstract samples of colour. The range of colours is surprising - rich greens, yellows and blues, appear along with fuchsia and orange - hardly the colours one would expect from the natural environment.
Mestitz 'Swatch Australia' 2008Mestitz questions the validity and motive of watching a program such as Nature Australia from the comfort of the living room. In this way, her artwork is reminiscent of the well-known Leunig cartoon, Television Sunset, in which a parent and small child happily watch a sunset on a television screen while an identical sun sets in an adjacent window. We live in an increasingly sedentary world, where many of us live in sprawling cities with only small pockets of salvaged bush, and wildlife documentaries fetch high ratings on television. Yet, as depicted in Leunig’s illustration, it seems hard to believe that these programs provide a very satisfying or true experience of the environment. Like the traditional landscape painting, a nature program fails to supply the smells, feel and true meaning of the place. By capturing the colour swatches, particularly the more synthetic looking samples, Mestitz highlights the frequently bizarre and artificial depiction of the natural environment in our society. Swatch Australia illustrates the bizarre relationship that many of us have with the environment - or rather, the substitute environment contained within the television screen - and is therefore an insightful and contemporary representation of nature.
For landscape art to accurately depict the natural environment, artists have to recognise that the landscape as we know it is essentially a human construct, and an acknowledgment of our relationship with nature is necessary for a true representation. The artists in Geometric Nature show that despite its perception as an opposite, the artificial is able to represent the natural; and as strange as this seems, this occurs because our cultural values will always define the world around us. We are only human after all.
Geometric Nature -room shot
This essay accompanied the exhibition 'Geometric Nature', shown at Devonport Regional Gallery 15th August - 20th September. Geometric Nature was curated by Lucy Hawthorne as part of CAST's Tasmanian Emerging Curator initiative, and she was mentored by the staff at Devonport Regional Gallery.
Geometric Nature -room shot