Autumn Winter 2019
Rose Danford-Phillips admits it: as the daughter of gardeners, she draws her inspiration from nature. And when she evokes her love for lace, she speaks about a “delicate sensation of petals” … With her skill at vegetation metaphors, she explains that she transformed a magnificent piece of Sophie Hallette lace into a “rampant vine” for her graduate collection at the Royal College of Art. Either by combining it with a fringed silk to reinforce the idea of an uncontrollable, wild nature or by hand-embroidering it onto plastic to create a sense of nature recreated in a laboratory. “Lace tells a story” she says and hers transports us into a poetic, feminine and modern tale.

Difference and Repetition
The title references Deleuze’s thesis ‘Difference and Repetition’ – his attempt to understand reality without referring to identities. The artists aim to ‘unidentify’ the audience – to criticize the bubbles of reality which technology has helped us to build around ourselves. By allowing ourselves to remove our identity occasionally, we can better understand the thoughts of those we disagree with and therefore better work together to build a combined reality. Difference (in both senses) is generated by the motion control system which continuously changes the pose of the mirrors relative to the viewer. This movement disrupts space itself, creating a transformation similar to that of a Lorentz transformation when one travels close to the speed of light. This causes space itself to compress, twist and break, giving the viewer a tool for observing the non-absolute nature of time.

Vision II
David Spriggs’ Vision artwork series have a distinct focus on the senses. Accentuated by an affinity between its subject matter and the fragmentary nature of the medium, there is a tension created between form and emptiness. Appearing both as an implosion and as an explosion depending on the one’s perception, the viewer has the sense that he/she is observing a form in becoming, yet at the same time breaking down. The immersive experience created by Vision provides the audience with the impression that they are in the midst of witnessing an event, something of monumental proportions akin to the Big Bang. In changing viewpoints by navigating around the work, Vision is continually altered, breaking down at the sides so that the viewer can only see the edge planes of multiple sheets, begging the question: Is there in fact a form, or just individual images?

AEA.movi
Imitation is a part of being human. Eelco Brand uses both paint and digital techniques to create images that reflect his conception of nature. In this sense his works are not so much the depiction of an actual place or event, but the way he imagined it and modelled it in the calculated space of digital art. Viewing his work can be both an alienating and deeply human experience. His subjects are modelled to the utmost detail to create a kind of hyperreal cosmos, a simulacrum of nature. Still, we experience these models of forests, cars and mountains as pure conveyers of meaning. These static images speak the language of scale, light, repetition, infinite detail and the deeper meaning of a simple gesture.

Landscape Paintings
Jardins d’Été by Quayola pays homage to the tradition of french impressionism and the late works of Claude Monet.The second iteration of this series of artworks investigates the ways in which nature is observed, studied and synthesized, becoming a point of departure towards abstration. Quayola recreated similar conditions to the classical impressionist landscape paintings, however he engaged with an extensive technological apparatus to capture the sensitive nuances of reality beyond our senses. Here natural landscapes are observed and analysed through the eye of the machine, and re-purposed through new modes of visual synthesis.

Chijikinkutsu
“Chijikinkutsu” is a coinage, specially created for the title of this work by mingling two Japanese words: “Chijiki” and “Suikinkutsu”.”Chijiki” means geomagnetism: terrestrial magnetic properties that cannot be sensed by the human body but that exists everywhere on earth. Since long before the Age of Discovery, people have traveled with navigation using compasses employing geomagnetism. In recent years, various devises that utilize geomagnetism have even been incorporated into smartphones[…] “Suikinkutsu” is a sound installation for a Japanese traditional garden, invented in the Edo period. The sounds of water drops falling into an earthenware pot buried under a stone wash basin resonate through hollow bamboo utensils. The concept of the work “Chijikinkutsu” does not derive from experimentalism of science and technology on which media arts rely, nor from architectural theory of western music upon which some sound arts lay their foundation. While utilizing the action of geomagnetism normally treated as a subject of science, this sound installation expands the subtle sounds of “Suikinkutsu” in the context of Japanese perspective on Nature.

Eden
‘Eden’ blurs the boundaries between man-made wonders and the beauty of nature. Opening up your senses to a world of delight and new sensations through a curated retail experience. ‘Eden’ is a celebration of natural elements, merging the lush greenery of the existing site-163 Retail Park with a wondrous landscape referenced from the mythical story of the ‘Garden of Eden’. Providing visitors with a refuge away from the hustle and bustle of daily life; as a space of solace and contemplation.

The Petal Room
The Petal Room consists of 3,500 real flowers, 6 million paper petals designed to fall with beautiful trajectories, a signature scent, and sensor-activated lighting that incorporates microscopic scans of flowers. These elements stimulate the senses and allow visitors to feel physically connected to flowers and nature.

Last Child in the Woods
In her work, Melanie Bonajo examines the paradoxes inherent to ideas of comfort with a strong sense for community, equality, and body-politics. Through her videos, performances, photographs and installations, she studies subjects related to how technological advances and commoditybased pleasures increase feelings of alienation, removing a sense of belonging in an individual. Captivated by concepts of the divine, Bonajo explores the spiritual emptiness of her generation, examines peoples’ shifting relationship with nature and tries to understand existential questions by reflecting on our domestic situation, ideas around classification, concepts of home, gender and attitudes towards value.

Cloud
Liz Nurenberg: “Cloud” My Sculptural objects act as experience stations where viewers can form relationships both to the work and to other viewers. Interactivity allows me to explore intimacy, personal space, and how the body physically connects with something while confusing the line between viewers and viewed. The handmade nature of my work evokes intimacy, suggesting the presence of human effort or authorship. Sound acts as an inner voice, which can create a subtle sense of awkwardness. These touches come together to build a scene where interactions happen and narrative forms.

梅拉妮·柏娜桥
progress
Melanie Bonajo exams the paradoxes inherent in our future-based ideas of comfort. Through her photographs, performances, videos and installations Bonajo examines subjects related to progress that remove from the individual a sense of belonging and looks at how technological advances and commodity-based pleasures increase feelings of alienation within the individual. Captivated by concepts of the divine, she explores the spiritual emptiness of her generation, examines peoples’ shifting relationship with nature and tries to understand existential questions by looking at our domestic situation, idea’s around classification, concepts of home, gender and attitudes towards value.

Keith Lemley is a sculpture artist whose work focuses on creating an informative relationship between object and space and challenges the physicality of material presence. Many of his works are made up of opposing forces of ephemeral light and structural woodblocks that unite in a metaphorical existence of natural systems. His background in science and engineering is reflected in the unique synthesizing of media that portray scenes from nature and memory and inspire a sense of exploration for the viewer.

林天苗
Endless door
LIAN TIANMIAO lives and works out of Beijing creating predominantly installation pieces. She has made a career transforming silk, threads and textiles into elaborate works of art and also for her experimentation with photography and video. Her art has a textural and tactile nature that plays on the senses.

КЛЕР МОРГАН
كلير مورجان
克莱尔·摩根
クレア·モーガン
클레어 모건
By the Skin of the Teeth
My work is about our relationship with the rest of nature, explored through notions of change, the passing of time, and the transience of everything around us. For me, creating seemingly solid structures or forms from thousands of individually suspended elements has a direct relation with my experience of these forces. There is a sense of fragility and a lack of solidity that carries through all the sculptures.

Ephemeral and ethereal

Ephemeral and ethereal, the work of artist Rein Vollenga is particularly notable in his ‘wearable sculpture’. Vollenga’s unique and visceral work is darkly seductive, and his creations have been embraced by many of fashions forward thinkers as they continue to venture into darker, more fetishistic territory that celebrates a deeper, animalistic sexuality and revels in individuality and fragmented identity. Vollenga is a native of Berlin, reflected in the Teutonic avant garde nature that pervades his work, as is a dangerous, slightly sinister and hedonistic sense that harks back to pre-war Berlin’s days of decadence and ‘voluptuous panic’; his creations conjure all the allure of the decadence of a futuristic Ball Masque. Renowned for his wearable art, which takes form in sculptural headwear and accessories, the artist is now gaining the attention and patronage of the fashion industries elite; a more severe and gothic, 21st Century Dali if you will. Chasseur sat down with Rein himself to discuss his work; its origins and nature, and what drives the man behind the masks.

Клер Морган
كلير مورجان
克莱尔·摩根
クレア·モーガン
클레어 모건
Lo
My work is about our relationship with the rest of nature, explored through notions of change, the passing of time, and the transience of everything around us. For me, creating seemingly solid structures or forms from thousands of individually suspended elements has a direct relation with my experience of these forces. There is a sense of fragility and a lack of solidity that carries through all the sculptures.

Untitled’ 1965
“Morris’ work concerns the relation of what we see to what we know. He sometimes described his practice of this period as a series of ‘investigations,’ a term that implies an almost scientific purpose. Yet the work possesses other implications. For example, Morris spoke of his progress as having been framed by philosophical doubt. In this sense, he saw his work as propositional in nature, each object representing an experiment, a ‘what-if’ proposition”.Bernard Ceysson