Domesticated |A 2019 Project | 18/1/2020
And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 1 | 28
The Anthropocene. Three hundred years
riding a roller coaster of cultivation, exploration and segregation
of the land. A new era. Human's have dominated and chastised the
landscape for daring to show its own agency. How can mother nature
speak down to us, has she not realized that her once weak child has
grown into an adult. An adult capable of controlling the surroundings
from whence they came. The human race, we find ourselves
ordered, yet contaminated,
rich, yet malnourished,
powerful, yet weak in action.
The epoch of the human is before us, if
it not to end us.
A lion in a cage. The landscape in
districts.
50,181,019,638 square meters per year
137482245 square meters per day
5728426 square meters per hour
95473 square meters per minute
1591 square meters per seconds
By the time you have started and
finished this sentence an area the size of Kanye West's and Kim
Kardashion's 22 Million dollar mega mansion has been lost to
farmland; stricken of its wildness and tamed for human consumption
this land has been claimed and immersed into our society. 7.4 acres
of gluttony and market forces. No longer wild, no longer foreign, we
create mono cultures of flora that soak into the soil and swell to
blanket our hills, our valleys, our planet. We no longer live
on the planet, we live on our planet.
Domesticated | 2019 |
240cm x 90cm
This series of work came at an
important time for me. I became obsessed with portraying a "natural"
landscape under the thumb of humanity. So many aspects I controlled
to preserve the domineering quality of mankind. Clay a symbol for the
earth was formed in molds. These cookie cutter plots were to be fill
with domesticated grasses. Hinting with the smell of barbecue, my
landscape was fired in a mix of wood, ash and oils. This cauldron of
smoke, tar and carcinogens permanently leaves the landscape scarred
with a thick grease. I burnt and smoldered these pots while listening
to radio which reach out to me with the sounds of an Amazonian valley
burning. It was then I realized it wasn't the fire that was spreading
it was us. We have the harbingers of our destiny and the bringers of
our doom. Like a wave rolling towards we sit in the shallows ignoring
the power that is being unleashed. Into my desecrated vessels I
filled agriculturally certified soil to which wheat was planted. The
invasive plants took a quick liking to the soil manifesting it's
destiny they took the soil as theirs. This colonization and
occupation of a landscape is permanently documented in a attempt to
capture a slow moving, yet fleeting moment.
As I reflect on a years work I'm lain
in despair. Our own country is burning. The land parched and set
alight. The Amazonian fires that helped to dictate this work have
spread to my own backyard. Choked in smoke and peering through a haze
I see these two fires are one of the same. We have become the
arsonist's of our planet. Burning and churning through through the
land till nothing is left to live unto itself. We have ripped opened
Pandora's box only to find a reflection of ourselves. We will face
retribution for our choices, our ethics, our hubris. The
Anthropocene, the dawn of man and the dusk of our planet.
“there stand two urns, the one filled with evil gifts, and the other with good ones. He for whom Jove the lord of thunder mixes the gifts he sends, will meet now with good and now with evil fortune; but he to whom Jove sends none but evil gifts will be pointed at by the finger of scorn, the hand of famine will pursue him to the ends of the world, and he will go up and down the face of the earth, respected neither by gods nor men. “
Homer: The Illiad
24. BOOK XXIV
Image source NASA
(https://www.nasa.gov/images/content/386905main_moorhead_tm5_2009253.jpg)
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