Themes

The theme that I am working on is the irony that despite humankind's ultimate and absolute dependency on plants, nature, and the natural world, literally for our very survival, we are demolishing and destroying our very means to live.  I aim to express the exquisite beauty of plants and the world of flowers through my eco-printing work as well as depict my own feelings of devastation regarding the destruction of the natural world.

The second decade of the 21st century requires new ways of analysing nature and humanity’s connection to it. We need a critical dialogue between human/nature/science/culture relations. In her publication, “Staying with the Trouble” Donna Haraway (2016) expresses how we as humanity need to stay, in the present with our ‘troubles’ and current issues within the Anthropocene. Haraway further introduces the Chyulucene which combines two Greek words of staying in the living and in the dying in response-ability of what has come before, the ‘inheritances’ or full comings of what has passed and might still be.
The theme of ‘Biophilia’ literally means a love of life and all living things. Humans have within them an innate sense of connection to other forms of life. By creating awareness and bringing attention to the magnificence of vegetal forms, colours, shapes, and natural ‘designs’. I hope to both enhance our respect for ourselves as humans and reinforce our obligation to treat other forms of life on this planet with love and care. My work engages with the social, political, historical, philosophical, and cultural context of conservation and ecological awareness.

I have explored the idea of ‘remnants’ and ‘residuum’ which is a combination of a small piece of cloth that is left over from the end of a roll as well as a chemical residue or remainder of what is left behind after evaporation, combustion distillation, etc. This would relate to the fabric as well as to the remainder of what the plant has left behind after the chemical & and printing process.

Remnant vegetation or bushland can be defined as those patches of native trees, shrubs, and grasses still left. Remnant vegetation can be any shape or size and can include all types of native vegetation communities, including forest, native or indigenous grasslands, scrubland, coastal heathland, or rainforest.
On a deeply personal level. My dearest mother who passed away in October 2022, was an Earth goddess and taught me all I know about the value of the soil and the growth of plants. Penelope planted trees wherever her life took her, but she also planted the generational seeds of the love of the vegetal world within me. I’m now left with the remnants of her life and the memory of what she imparted to and within me.

New materialism is another theme and concept I will further research involving contemporary art practices that explore crafts, materiality, and processes of materials in relation to theories of New Materialism. This pays attention to the increasing interest within the contemporary art fields in crafts as a method and material, as well as concerned with our longing for something tactile and physical in a digital era. The concept is that if we are to change the matter from which an artwork is created, then we may invariably change its meaning (or message) and what it seeks to express.