Force of Nature

From the beginning of human history in every culture, nature has played a vital role in creative expression. The landscape and the work of art became inextricably linked with the so-called Land Art movement exemplified by Robert Smithson’s famous Spiral Jetty (1970) at the Great Salt Lake near Utah, which was created entirely out of mud, salt, rocks, earth, and water.
This exhibition includes both established and emerging international contemporary artists inspired not only by nature but also its processes – evolution, birth, growth, aging, decay, change. Nature is constantly in a state of change and the artists’ acute awareness and sensitivity to this change is crucial to the creation of their work that can be site-specific, monumental or ephemeral.
Working in a diverse range of media and sometimes with a wide range of natural materials, they are continually searching and synthesizing creative, new ways to redefine our relationship with nature. Their work can be evocative, provocative or sublime, and might also communicate an urgent environmental message. Some of the participating artists collaborate with natural materials ranging from the raw, the found, to the discarded rather than making works ‘about’ nature. Others make work that is conceptual, so that the ideas behind the work are more important than the materials.
Movement, change, light, growth and decay are fundamental to nature, the energies that artists strive to capture in their work. The artist’s observation and understanding of nature has as its goal the understanding of human nature, and of the human condition within nature.