From Stella Rosa McDonald…
How does technology affect our relationships with the natural world? Does the shared i-choreography of tap, scroll and pinch bind us together? Are we all sinking further into the couch, one swipe at a time? The question of how we reconcile our natural and virtual worlds is the subject of Grace Kingston’s Deep Solitude at Archive Space.
Developed during a residency the artist undertook at the Arteles Creative Centre in regional Finland, ‘Deep Solitude’ uses photography, installation and talking rocks to demonstrate our rapidly cultivated dependence on technology and our altered understanding of the natural world. We are forever speaking on behalf of nature, but what if it could articulate itself in terms we could readily understand? Kingston imagines nature sighing—as her small soft sculptures of rocks do when they are prodded. In the large landscape photograph Tree Island, (2015) Kingston takes a prosaic scene and casts it in a utopic light; the image of the almost conspiratorial meeting of trees in a field suggests the personhood of the natural world. As we continue to be drawn to the freedoms of the natural and virtual worlds, the protections, privileges and freedoms of both realms remain contentious issues. ‘Deep Solitude’ doesn’t pit nature and technology against each other; rather it suggests the potential for dialogue between these two organic systems.
Until June 13th
Archive Space, Newtown
Pic: Grace Kingston, Tree Island, 2015. Courtesy of the artist.
