Dirty Nature
‘Dirty Nature’ — John Holland and Fiona MacDonald at The Standpoint Gallery, 45 Coronet Street, N1.
Reviewed by Heidi James.
‘Dirty Nature’ — what a loaded title… is Nature dirty? Comprised as it is of sex and death? Or is the title referring to the adulteration of the natural world? Perhaps even, it refers to our essentially filthy human nature…
Nature is transhistorical, isn’t it? Evading progress — or do Darwin’s theories of evolution follow Hegel’s model of the positive direction of History? It appears to be neither in this exhibition. What it is, is an excited, obscene parody of its essential components. Polluted by humanity and drained of its ‘innocence’ this exhibition portrays a hyper-nature, a nature that shrugs off the traditional and anthropomorphic role of nurturing mother; a nature taking its shirt off and squaring up to its adversary.
Comprised of a collection of lyrical paintings of organic matter, painted in subtle ochre’s and greens, that are juxtaposed against alarming and toxic background colours; and elusive installations constructed from out of context materials, that at once intrigue and repel. The work is oddly structuralist in its binary representations, nature/nurture, ugly/beautiful, male/female, good/bad etc. This doesn’t have a reductive effect however, merely focuses the viewer on the work and its inherent questions.
Among the strongest pieces were ‘Anthropomorph ll’, an acrylic still life of green leaves curling around teeth still secure in a jawbone, the background colour a sickly lilac, perhaps the lilac of newly exposed innards; and ‘Jezebel’s Island’, a lagoon replete with cliffs, waterfall and minute human’s scrabbling about the rocks all contained on a transformed coffee table - gazing on this work one becomes an Olympian, presiding over fate, as indeed perhaps we all are with our collective ecological responsibility. In the back room, resides the work, ‘Please Come Back’, a toxic meadow of flimsy sculptures, flowers and fungi, ersatz swallow’s nests gummed high to the walls, their presence given away by the piles of guano on the floor. Rendered in paper, twisted foil and silicone, the viewer tip-toes around the precariously placed pieces on the gallery floor, thus interrogating the privileging of Art over Nature, unless of course you are one of the rare souls who tip-toe through Sunday fields in your Hunter wellies.
A colourfully gothic comment on the state of things, Nature with a punk ethic, this show unashamedly questions our conception of nature and the ecological battleground. A must-see exhibition, if nothing else to place your bets on the winner of the ‘Nature versus Nurture’ table football game… my money is the super furry animals.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Heidi James is the author of Carbon (forthcoming) and the Publisher of Social Disease, home of Tony O’Neill, Lee Rourke and HP Tinker.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Tuesday, April 24th, 2007.
