SHONA wilson Offering

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1 SHONA wilson Offering

2 shona wilson Offering 14 September - 1 October 2016 Opening reception Wednesday 14 September, 6pm With a career spanning over two decades, Shona Wilson continues to engage with permutations of the natural world in her intricate, awe-inspiring assemblages. Often focussing on the by-passed and the unseen, the artist amplifies and decontextualizes the micro to draw attention to the wonders of ostensibly insignificant elements of the everyday. This ongoing engagement with Nature s found fragments brings her closer to understanding and communicating the interconnected world we share. Her new series of sculptural assemblages Offering represents the artist s personal gesture of gratitude to Nature for the tremendous gifted bounty. Created solely from found natural material and, specifically, from what the artist had already collected (so as not remove anything new from the environment), these works also embody Wilson s wish to honour and promote a sustainable art practice. Thematically, they canvass our contemporary disconnection from Nature once a crucial part of our collective being calling for us to reengage with and rediscover our authentic place within the natural world. We seem to have forgotten that Culture is never outside of Nature. Wilson s offerings pulse with a holistic and harmonic vision of the intricate web of Nature that weaves existence. Mesmeric patterns of seedpods, twigs and bone emblemize natural phenomena that often elude human perception, including diatoms (microscopic phytoplankton), fractals (e.g. snowflakes) and cymatics (visual manifestations of sound and vibration). These objects seek to conjure and reveal the energy that created and resides within them. In addition to this, the abstract patterns and forms Wilson references have roots in our domestic cultural heritage and universal spirituality via visual affiliations with mandalas, yantras and lacemaking etc. These interconnections forge a dialogue between the interfaces and thresholds of Nature and Culture, ultimately revealing that these seemingly diametric sectors are inseparably one. This sense of unity is embodied in the positive and negative spaces consciously created in the works, the interplay of shadows and surface visualising the philosophical tenants of yin and yang. Through their visual harmony of form and material the artist suggests that the works in Offering manifest a therapeutic function: I hope these Offerings resonate as healing or therapeutic objects in their own right. They are embedded with the vibrational patterns and tones of the natural world, of the very materials they are made from, and thus they emit the frequencies of the materials within them. In this sense each Offering is a visual song for and of Nature. As a series Offering becomes a chorus.

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4 Offering No.2 found and processed twigs, seedpods, seed and bones 130 x 130 x 10 cm $11,500

5 Offering No.1 found and processed twigs, crab, sea urchin and bones 90 x 90 x 10 cm $7,700

6 Offering No.4 found and processed twigs, seedpods, crayfish, echindna quills, feathers and bones 105 x 105 x 10 cm $7,700

7 Offering No.3 found and processed twigs, seedpods, seed and bones 90 x 90 x 10 cm $6,600

8 Offering No.5 found and processed twigs, seedpods, seed and bones 90 x 90 x 10 cm $6,600

9 Offering No.6 found and processed twigs, roots, seedpods, beetle and bones 90 x 90 x 10 cm $6,600

10 Offering No.7 found and processed twigs, seedpods, crab and bones 90 x 90 x 10 cm $6,600

11 Diatom No. 13 twigs, seedpods, branchlets and plastic 35 x 25 cm (65 x 65 x 8 cm framed) $5,500

12 Interlace No. 4 found & processed twigs, fern, seeds and plastic 35 x 35 cm (64 x 64 x 7 cm framed) $5,500

13 Interlace No.5 fern, seedpods, seeds, cicada and plastic 39 x 39 cm (65 x 65 x 8 cm framed) $5,500

14 Interlace No. 9 found and processed natural material, plastic and lace 29 x 29 x 3 cm (50 x 50 x 7 cm framed) $4,900

15 Interlace no.7 found and processed natural material, plastic and lace 29 x 29 x 3 cm (50 x 50 x 7 cm framed) $4,400

16 Interlace No. 8 found and processed natural material, plastic and lace 29 x 29 x 3 cm (50 x 50 x 7 cm framed) $4,400