Project outline:CUT/STACK/BURN is a performative re-enactment of a redundant rural activity - furze cutting for domestic fuel (or gorse outside of cornwall). The project uses art installation as a platform to develop a visual conversation about the implications and absence of sustainable approaches in the management of land and its resources. Our current use of energy in an age of climate change becomes a focal point and pivotal issue in this visual debate.

event poster

event poster

Friday 16 February 2007

My practice is concerned with examining ways in which contemporary art can engage the landscape in a valid interactive discourse not based solely on a one way observational relationship. It is an exploration of the relationship between artist and environment and the how the sociological landscape figures in contemporary art, by looking at the artists’ use of the landscape as a source of inspiration. An important part of this is the annexation of the landscape as product, cultural change towards it and the potential for disenfranchisement that may incur. My interests and inevitable enquiries, led to a variety of social topics concerned with apparent schisms in Cornwall’s resident community’s needs and desires contrasted against those of a transitory tourist population and a landscape under pressure. The way these needs play out and the friction that ensues with each user group is of significant interest. This, in connection with the history of Cornwall’s past and present art community, presented a series of questions for me. How does a practising artist, responding to the landscape as a source of inspiration, fit into Cornwall’s contemporary cultural context? Are the present socio-economic situations, and the issues and cultural practices that change it more of a pressing concern than the depiction of the landscape itself? Could a visual interpretation of the shifting sociological importance of the landscape be of more relevance than pictorial representation? How can this proceed?

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mini beasts

mini beasts

cross section

cross section

struts

struts

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