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Indepth Arts News:
"Unnatural Selection Presented by Fluff"
2010-05-27 until 2010-06-13
Londonewcastle Project Space
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
Fluff presents Unnatural Selection an exhibition which explore and investigates the esoteric and fantastical natural world. The exhibition runs from May 27 to June 13, 2010 at Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch Street E2 7DP in London. Participating Artists include Adam Ball, Caroline List, Freya Douglas-Morris, Fiona Macdonald, Sam Jury, Christopher Stevens. Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it, the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the mist. - Edgar Allan Poe
We are all familiar with Darwins theory of natural selection, whereby evolution is determined by favourable heritable traits. This is how organisms survive and thrive or else become redundant and hence extinct. Unnatural Selection as the title suggests is concerned with the distortion and perversion of this order of things.
In this show we bring together a group of artists who through their own distinctive practice are interested in the notion that nature and by implication Man have reached an uneasy balance, an unstable equilibrium that oscillates between harmony and conflict.
Each artist has his or her own phantasmagorical take on the natural world. Caroline Lists landscapes suggest displaced natural habitats, where nature and the elements are transforming into unsettling worlds. Adam Balls paintings and cut outs are vivid euphoric fantasy places, simultaneously alluring and foreboding. Freya Douglas-Morris Freya Douglas Morris painterly landscapes resonant with memories and half forgotten moments in time. Fiona MacDonalds morphological forms suggest the transformation act of the artistic process as well the emergence of a new organism. Christopher Stevens work shares similar concerns, whereby the internal life force of a painted form acts under its own pulsating and mutating will. Sam Jurys video piece alludes to a dystopian vision of the future. An unsettling and disturbing landscape whereby the role of humanity is uncertain and undetermined.
With Unnatural Selection we find ourselves in the realm of the other place the unknown and the uncertain. There are clear references to Science Fiction, the fantasy landscapes of the future as well as alluding to Romantic painting of the past and the work of Caspar David Friedrich. Unnatural Selection plays with the notion of the sublime, exploring unsettling aesthetics in a contemporary context.
We live in dark times. Our relationship to our environment is ambivalent at best. We have a new breed of artists who are looking directly into the abyss with an uneasy mixture of wonder and awe.
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