art
february 2009
10:00am - 6:00pm
topic
stuffed and mounted (wolf, rabbit, deer)
Fri 20th - Sun 22th February 09 | 10am - 6pm
Edge gallery
recycled fur, timber clay, wire
‘stuffed and mounted’ developed from a concern about our relationship to the natural environment. Much of contemporary life takes place in interior spaces. The ‘outside world’ is often experienced through a window or a screen or through bars – engagement is vicarious and safe.
It is intriguing then, that we fill our clean and sanitized spaces with simulacra of the natural world. There exist a contradiction in the human destruction of natural resources on the outside, only to remake pallid (but decorative) imitations of those once breathing bodies we have just destroyed.
It is intriguing then, that we fill our clean and sanitized spaces with simulacra of the natural world. There exist a contradiction in the human destruction of natural resources on the outside, only to remake pallid (but decorative) imitations of those once breathing bodies we have just destroyed.
Alison Aitken
Recently graduating with a BA from RMIT my practice has always included recycled objects or materials, but none more so than the series of sculpture on which I am currently working. The impetus for the Scar Tissue series came from a specific concern about the consumption and wastage of the Festive Season in the Western World and my need to escape its excesses. For the past five years I have collected dead Christmas trees dumped on nature-strips, broken toys and appliances, wrapping paper, all the cast offs, with the intention of cobbling together a secret place of psychological refuge. My Friends belong to a landscape in limbo; hybrid creatures, a mongrel mix of recycled reality, art and longing.
thecupboard@a1.com.au