Aura Valerie Wright-Willemsen
Northern Beaches Secondary College Mackellar Girls Campus
THE WRECK OF HOPE (AFTER FRIEDRICH): DISSOLVING LANDSCAPE; ARTIFICE; ARTEFACT
Documented Forms
Plastic sculpture, printing.
Influenced by Romantic ideals, my body of work subverts historical perceptions of the divine natural landscape to express a contemporary view of the consequences of our consumerist society on nature subsequent to the Industrial Revolution. In my work, natural elements are constrained by humanity’s artificial creations. Through the use of synthetic materials and the inherent deconstruction and reconstruction of collage my intent was to reveal the reality of contemporary nature, where plastic waste and landfill have tarnished the grandeur of the divine landscape. What humans once sought to conquer is now destroyed.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Joan Ross, Caterina Rossato, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Chrystal Rimmer, Vilde Rolfsen, Caspar David Friedrich.
Marker's Commentary
This compelling documented form fuses and carefully integrates the found natural object and mediated forms to create a central focus based upon the issue of environmental sustainability. The title makes references to human tragedy and the power of nature portrayed by Caspar David Friedrich. The objects, photographs and prints extend and investigate the significance of material and form within a world of industrialisation. The series explores the phenomenon of art to generate a political ecology of natural objects and account for its demise in the age of the Anthropocene. The work avoids being didactic and accounts for the agency of human intervention on nature in an evocative, refined and innovative manner.