ParkeHarrison’s Photo Series ‘Gray Dawn’ Focusses On The Land And Our Mortality

moray mair | Photography | April 4, 2013

This series of photographs, entitled ‘Gray Dawn’ by the incredible artistic duo Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison are a continuation of a decade of work that focuses on the relationship between man, nature and technology. Months ago I posted up photos from a previous series called the ‘Architect’s Brother’. It was a revelation to me. Their surreal and terrifying images were striking, poignant and weighted down with hopelessness, despair and the inevitable climatic fall of man in the face of environmental destruction.

This series is more nuanced. There is colour, the images more abstract, metaphorical, less immediate. Require you to think more, ruminate, question. Having said that ParkHarrison continue to delve into myth, ritual and our volatile relationship with nature and technology, they continue to examine the effects mankind has on the land and the land has on our mortality.

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Amanda Brazier’s Paintings Begin In The Earth

moray mair | Art and design | March 19, 2013

What I love most about Amanda Brazier‘s paintings is her process and the limitations it imposes on her work. Brazier begins each painting by gathering soil around her home in Tennessee and North Carolina and making paint out of it. And what beautiful names she gives her pigments; ‘Red Bank Red’, ‘Twin Oaks Umber’ and ‘Chickamauga Gold’. This meditative process is a fundamental part of her artistic life.

In many ways it is the earth that gives Brazier the power to paint. The physical act of making pigment and using it in her work being her way of connecting into her origins, into herself as a living being in a specific place. This is a physical connection between the earth and the spirit, the physical and the conceptual, the limitations of substance and the infinite possibilities of the imagination.

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Simon Prades Latest Illustrations From ‘Loup’ Describe The Wonders Of The Forest

moray mair | Art and design | March 8, 2013

So I’m back, re-visiting Simon Prades wonderful illustrations. In particular his new series ‘Loup’ which is all about the forest, its change through the seasons, its contrasts, the light and shade, the stories it invokes in our imagination.

What I love most about Prades is that he’s in love with drawing, the simple act of putting pen and pencil to paper. There is no hiding behind clever witticisms, digital bravado in these drawings. It is all about technique. And Prades is a wonderful exponent of it.

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William Miller’s ‘Gowanus Canal’ Photo Series Looks At The Detritus Of Humankind

moray mair | Photography | February 28, 2013

William Miller‘s photo series have always fascinated me. Last year he produced his wonderful ‘Ruined Polaroid’ series – a psychedelic vision of the world as seen through the lens of a faulty polaroid camera. This time round he steps back into abstract territory with a look at the detritus floating on the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, New York. They’re beautiful images, reminiscent of abstract expressionist paintings or photographs taken through the Hubble telescope of dirty galaxies far, far, away. Unfortunately for us the pictures are taken here on earth and are a shocking indictment of human disregard for the environment, of the spaces in which we live.

The pictures are at once beautiful and ugly, colourful and putrid, a story of our industrial march forward towards an inevitable environmental death. It’s particularly poignant given that BP are currently in court over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

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Yao Lu’s New Landscapes Photo Montages Look At The Destruction Of The Environment Using Chinese Painting Motifs

moray mair | Photography | February 22, 2013

Yao Lu’s ‘New Landscapes’ photo series is a treatise on environmental destruction but it is through a Chinese lens that Lu wakes us up to this global ecological disaster. The conceit that underlies this series is Lu’s deconstruction of formal Chinese painting aesthetics which he uses in his digitally reconstructed photos of rubbish hidden under green protective nets. What we see first are idyllic rural mountain landscapes shrouded in the mist. It is only on closer inspection that the truth appears. These are mutated landscapes, the result of decades of rampant urbanisation and industrial disasters, an all to common story in the history of globalisation.

To make these montages Lu takes photos of Chinese landfills covered in green protective netting and then digitally adds in motifs most commonly found in Chinese traditional paintings such as; mist, trees, waterfalls, pagodas and so on. But rather than inspiring, illuminating and creating something mythical Lu creates a picture of helplessness. As if there is nothing we can do but record, acknowledge and succumb to the inevitability of the destruction of nature. All at once Lu juxtaposes the past and future, one we can never go back to, the other already here.

There is alot of detail in these images from the green netting commonly found on building sites to the buildings, signs and planes flying overhead to the Great Wall Of China and the beautiful trees that have been depicted in Chinese paintings for millennia. This is work that forces you to think, to contemplate, to realise the consequences of our actions, of waste, consumerism, wanton greed. One could say that nature has become a commodity and this is the most salutary reminder of them all.

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Dan Bradica’s Photos Of Constructions Are Disruptive Temporary Sculptures

moray mair | Photography | January 26, 2013

Dan Bradica‘s photo series, ‘Constructions’ is as much about artifice as it is about the natural environment. His simple concept of juxtaposing synthetic with natural materials in both a managed and natural landscape concentrates our mind, our view of what nature is, our perception of what is natural and what is not. Each of his temporary sculptures are at once diametrically opposed to the space they’re installed in yet similar in their geometry, their form. It’s an interesting idea, all the more so because Bradica works site – specifically which brings an added dimension to his work.

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Yuichi Hirako’s Paintings Are Based In Shinboku – A Japanese Animistic Belief System

moray mair | Art and design | November 19, 2012

Yuichi Hirako‘s paintings are concerned with alternate realities, a universe in which humans, cities and the forest become one. They are unusual paintings, created with great energy and gusto, the brushstrokes wild and fast, the colours vivid, the landscapes busy. There’s an obvious passion in his work, this artist is on a mission to posit the notion of a unified force, that a single spirit runs through all we know and don’t know.

Judging from what Hirako has said about his work it is directly influenced by the Japanese belief in ‘Shinboku’ in which plants and trees are given a god like status, are worshipped, are held in as much reverence as any other organism on this planet. In his paintings Hirako attempts to bring this idea of unified force together, his landscapes are mutated, man and nature are intertwined, are biologically connected, are one with each other.

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Bryan Nash Gill’s Relief Prints Of Tree Trunk Cross Sections Are Simple And Beautiful

moray mair | Art and design | November 12, 2012

Bryan Nash Gill‘s relief prints of tree-trunk cross sections are a simple, beautiful record of a trees life. To make the prints Gill recycles the wood from felled trees, cedar telephone poles and discarded fence posts in his native Connecticut. He then cuts the blocks with a chain saw, sands them down and burns and seals them with shellac – a tough natural primer and sealant – to accentuate the events in the trees life such as lightning strikes, burls, insect holes and its age rings.

Once the wood is prepared he coats the trunks cross-section with a thin layer of ink and then places a large sheet of paper upon the wood. He then presses down upon the paper and runs his hands over the paper until the ink is transfered. The result a wonderful natural design, a unique print of the once lived tree.

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Chris Jordan’s Midway Photo Series Is A Disturbing Document On Mass Consumption

moray mair | Art and design | October 26, 2012

Chris Jordan‘s ‘Midway: Message from the Gyre’ photo series is disturbing, revolting and sickening. The images were taken on Midway Atoll – famous for an air battle between the Japanese and Americans during WWII – where albatross chicks are continually being killed by their own mothers who mistake rubbish floating in the ocean for food and feed it to their young. It happens to tens of thousands of birds every year.

The series is a document. Nothing is changed, altered or moved. It is simply a statement about over consumption, the waste we create and the slow inevitable death of our planet. What is extraordinary about the images is the amount of plastic and other detritus the birds were able to consume before dying. Quite incredible when you think about it. This project, which has been ongoing since 2009, is typical of Jordan’s work. He has spent years recording the damaging consequences of American mass consumption of which we are equally at fault.

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Allyson Mellberg Taylor’s Drawings Make A Stand Against The Chemical Abuse Of Our Environment

moray mair | Art and design | September 12, 2012

Allyson Mellberg Taylor‘s drawings are a reminder of the dangers posed by chemicals in our environment. Her characters, usually boys and girls, are often plagued by malign growths and mysterious infections and often unaware of the perilous state in which they exist – a shocking indictment of society’s lacksidasical approach to the misuse of the land through chemical abuse. This theme is in keeping with her rural Virginian life where she lives as she makes, using non – toxic homemade materials to create her work such as walnut, egg tempera and natural pigments on recycled paper.

What’s interesting about Taylor’s work is that her drawings are actually very sweet, old fashioned and you’d almost be excused for thinking they belong in a childrens book. It’s only when you look closer that you realise there is something more sinister at work – rashes and spots are not the normal fare of a childrens illustrator. It’s this juxtaposition that makes her drawings stand out.

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ParkeHarrison’s Photographs Are A Surreal Battle Cry For The Environment

moray mair | Photography | September 10, 2012

Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison‘s photographs are a response to the ever diminishing relationship between man, technology and nature. The issues surrounding the environment have never been more pressing and this incredible husband and wife team are tackling the subject in a rather unique way. They have created a character as a vehicle for their ideas, an Everyman, a representative of humankind – dressed in a black suit and white shirt – who interacts with the earths landscape. The resulting images are of a man toyed with, played like a puppet, using improbable implements and machinery to both protect, heal and communicate with the land. All without hope.

These tableaux are elaborate fictions that often take months to develop and build. They are more akin to stage sets, scenes built on a film set in which the Everyman plays out a life of of despair in a series of impossible surreal situations. As Robert ParkeHarrison said about the work;

I want to make images that have open, narrative qualities, enough to suggest ideas about human limits. I want there to be a combination of the past juxtaposed with the modern. I use nature to symbolize the search, saving a tree, watering the earth. In this fabricated world, strange clouds of smog float by; there are holes in the sky. These mythic images mirror our world, where nature is domesticated, controlled, and destroyed.

The ParkeHarrisons work is important. It’s there to remind us, through humour, pathos, imagination and play what we continue to do to the land and what we need to do to heal it.

We create works in response to the ever-bleakening relationship linking humans, technology, and nature. These works feature an ambiguous narrative that offers insight into the dilemma posed by science and technology’s failed promise to fix our problems, provide explanations, and furnish certainty pertaining to the human condition. Strange scenes of hybridizing forces, swarming elements, and bleeding overabundance portray Nature unleashed by technology and the human hand.

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Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest Kinetic Sculptures Are Incredible Self – Sufficient Beach Creatures

moray mair | Art and design | August 21, 2012

Dutch artist Theo Jansen‘s Strandbeest kinetic sculptures are extraordinary objects, creatures, animals. Since 1990 he has been building self-sufficient beach creatures that survive on nothing more than wind. The creatures which have been ‘evolving’ for over 30 years have come along way, have gone through many eons of development, the latest his ‘animarae adulari’ created this summer on the beaches of the Netherlands.

The Strandbeests are made entirely from recycled bottles, wood, wing-like sails and plastic tubing. The bottles act as a stomach into which air is collected under high pressure by the flapping of the sails. Once collected the air acts a ‘food source’giving the animals the ability to move across the sands. Kind of complicated but here’s what Jansen says:

Self-propelling beach animals like Animaris Percipiere have a stomach. This consists of recycled plastic bottles containing air that can be pumped up to a high pressure by the wind.

Having created a mechanical means to power the beasts Jansen has gone on to develop ‘muscles’ that respond through the lengthening and shortening of the pipes and according to the reserve of air. When the air moves from the bottles through a small pipe in the tube it pushes a piston outwards and the ‘muscle’ elongates. This action then activates other muscles, the action repeats itself, which in turn creates control centres that are not unlike a brain.

This incredible piece of engineering allows the beasts to support themselves, as well as prevent them from drowning by integrating hoses that react to being blocked by water – telling them to move away from the sea. Unbelievable. I’m confused just writing this.
Jansen hopes to eventually achieve complete autonomy for future species, with the ‘animarae adulari’ one step closer to roaming the sandy dunes of the North Sea.

over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storms and water and eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.

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Incredible Underwater Sculpture By Jason deCaires Taylor

moray mair | Art and design | June 26, 2012

This underwater sculpture by Jason deCaires Taylor is called ‘The Silent Evolution’ and lies underneath the sea off the coast of Mexico. It is absolutely incredible. Taylor created the work with environmentally friendly materials that promote coral growth, the ph-neutral properties designed to last hundreds of years and to house the creatures that distort and transform them.

This work consists of 400 life – sized casts and forms a permanent artificial reef and addresses environmental concerns and the spectacle of buried treasure. Here’s what he has to say on his website:

The Museum aiming to demonstrate the interaction between art and environmental science forms a complex reef structure for marine life to colonise, inhabit and increase biomass on a grand scale. Each of the sculptures is made from specialized materials used to promote coral life, with the total installations occupying an area of over 420sq metres of barren seabed and weighing over 200 tons. The Cancun Marine Park is one of the most visited stretches of water in the world with over 750,000 visitors each year, placing immense pressure on its resources. The location of the sculptures promotes the recovery of the natural reefs at it relieves pressure on them by drawing visitors away.

So if you’re ever in Cancun you know what to do.

Via Beautiful Decay

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Art Installation Called Blue Trees By Konstantin Dimopoulos

Christopher Jobson | Art and design | April 4, 2012

This incredible art installation called ‘Blue Trees’ by Australian artist Konstantin Dimopoulos is, you’ll agree, very striking. And no they aren’t manipulated photographs, he did actually paint them. But, before you say anything, he does use environmentally safe pigments to paint the trunks and limbs of the trees concerned. He concentrates his work in urban areas to help raise awareness of worldwide deforestation - nearly 32 million acres of forests every year. He says about the work:

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