Exhibition - Abridged

Students from the Bachelor of Visual Arts held an exhibition on the bridge linking buildings at the Gordon. The exhibition explored mans impact on nature.
I exhibited three works. Forest Suburbia, Breath and Harbinger Tweet. 

FOREST SUBURBIA

FOREST SUBURBIA

Over the last decade the skyline has changed in the street where I live as in many other older suburbs.

Homes on large blocks with their established gardens and trees have been bulldozed, completely razed, and in just a few days.

The builders arrive and the matching townhouses are built. They are jutted together with common concrete drives and tiny spaces for gardens. Sometimes there is grass and sometimes the grass is artificial, but always there is no room for trees.

Property developers are making maximum profit from the lack of foresight of urban planners.

Trees have benefits. They cool the suburbs, provide shade for homes, absorb carbon thus cleaning the air we breathe. Trees are a habitat for birds and other wildlife. Trees add beauty, give privacy, softening a harsh skyline, and ironically increase the value of property.

When trees are taken away privacy is lost and the blinds come down. With no yard to play in the TV goes on. With no shade the house gets hotter and the air conditioner goes on. And the birds move away because their habitat is gone.

‘Forest Suburbia’ depicts the tall trees being felled by the chain saw leaving a skyline of power poles and power lines, TV antennas and ventilation pipes. Phthalo Green is a pigment made through a synthetic chemical process and it is this artificial color that is used for the sky silhouetting the artificial forest.

Graphite, charcoal synthetic polymer on brown paper.
Triptych 1500x100cm