GABRIELLE KRUGER

Artist Statement for MFA Graduate Show, Michealis Galleries, 2018

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Since the 20th century there has been a tremendous rise in plastic as both a material element of modern life and as a growing environmental pollutant. Recent evidence indicates that traces of plastic are now in the earth, which suggests a need to rethink what exactly the ‘natural’ environment is comprised of. Plastics are now so abundant in the environment that they are recognisable as deposits in sedimental layers of the Earth, a key geological indicator of the Anthropocene (the latest geological epoch, marked by the extent of human impact on the Earth’s systems and processes).

 

My work interrogates traditional Western landscape painting in light of the contemporary understanding that ‘nature’ has been rearticulated, even plasticised and hence rendered malleable, through human action. The idea of a plasticised natural environment is concomitant with the age of the Anthropocene. My work explores the idea of a socially and materially constructed landscape; utilising the medium of acrylic paint I reimagine the landscape with a material that embodies plastic. In traditional painting methods paint is usually applied to a physical ground, for example a linen canvas, a wooden board, even a wall or any other physical object. This ground operates as a base upon which the paint can function as a painting, and this substratum is part of the final art object. My work focuses on the materiality of acrylic paint as a type of plastic and its potential to function as a painting without a canvas, or ground.

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The physical elements of the canvas and the frame that holds and supports the image of the landscape are as implicated in the construction of symbolic meaning as the representation of it. Hence, to deconstruct the traditional Western landscape

painting one must remove the painting completely from the supporting systems in place.

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Focussed specifically on the plants within the landscape, and the regenerative ecological benefits they provide, my paintings mimic certain elements of plants and foliage. After the dried paint has been removed from the substratum it is ‘landscaped’ in the gallery space. I regard this act of landscaping as a form of gardening, manipulating plant-growth to construct a landscape. As in a garden, the ‘ungrounded’ paintings are arranged to simulate elements of nature. The garden is already an artificial simulation of the landscape, and here it is made even more artificial. The paint becomes like camouflage, an object of simulation and trickery: is it paint, a landscape, is it foliage? It is all these things, but on a molecular level it remains plastic paint. Through my painting I want to show that ‘nature’ cannot be encapsulated by simply painting a landscape on a canvas.

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Nature, as an unstable and ambiguous concept, cannot be framed (or grounded). Perhaps if we are able to reimagine ‘nature’ as inclusive of humans and their impact – instead of trying to rescue a pristine and untouched nature, one that almost does not exist anymore – we might be able to re- evaluate our position in the world and learn to value the significance (permanence and impermanence) of both natural and synthetic materials. Perhaps then we might not have an environmental issue wherein there is too much pollution and too few natural resources to sustain the ever-growing human population and its daily needs and wants.