Man and nature represented in many ways and cultural forms. Relationship between humans and animals, environmental responsibility, nature of beauty and mankinds place in the landscape. Our simultaneous reliance on and struggle for control over the natural world.
Start by sourcing artists work.
Sam Durant – Upside Down Pastoral Scene. Inverted artificial tree trunks grafted with real roots, fitted with audio speakers and installed stump side down. Root side up on mirrors (I like the use of mirrors!)
Marcel Dzama, 500 paper sheets per show, unframed and pinned to wall “like fugitive pages from a twised bedtime storybook”. Sparse backgrounds and isolated characters.
Trenton Doyle Hancock – proto-nuclear family, cartoonish illustrations, monochrome ink sketches.
Dean Hughes – a drawing inside a paper bag. Like this idea, organic matter, paper wood, pulp, trees, bark.
I plan to work more with painting/drawing/mark making and hopefully develop the idea into a sculpture.
Looking initially at the relationships between humans and animals – “if you were to come back an animal which one would it be?” – and what if the results were literal!
OK so I like cartoonish illustrations and these could be adapted and put into environmental settings but I dont like it so its back to the drawing board.
Looked back at Richard Long – now here’s a boy who knows about mark making. Oddly enough my idea came to me on holiday – its amazing how the brain can adapt when youre in Centre Parcs in the Lake District during the wettest 2 weeks in world history.
I took my son horse riding – well he rode, I sketched.
When we led the ponies down the disgusting wet piss and shit stained paths in our flip flops – I took note of the different marks made by man, animal and machine. These horses are ridden daily – 3 times a day (NOT WEATHER PERMITTING!), they follow the same route with the only variant being the rider. Paths get worn and foliage trampled.
The following morning it had been raining exceptionally hard so I went to the pottery painting room (!) and blagged a small bag of plaster. I went back up the paths the horses take and photographed the prints in the mud. Then I noticed some deep marks nearby, I think they are rabbit tracks, but whatever made them had definately been scared off as next to the normal deep prints there were lines as though the animal had scampered off in a hurry. These were the prints I chose to cast as the horses prints will always be the same as we control their movement – however we will never be able to control the wild animals. I love these casts and hope eventually to cast them in iron.
SARAH E WILSON 