March 6th, 2022Open studio at Wheatsheaf
Frances Guerin is holding an open studio over the long Labour Day weekend, Chillout Festival, IWD 12, 13, 14 March at Whitegum Studio, 55 Whitegum Drive, Wheatsheaf.
The studio is full of work for an exhibition at City of Ballarat ArtSpace 14 Lydiard Street from March 17 to April 10.
“These works began as the mega fires tore across Victoria and NSW in the summer of 2019, and Greta Thunberg sailed across to New York to address the U.N. with furious words “How Dare you” in response to inaction on the climate change and species extinction. Then Covid struck and the smog across Delhi cleared……
“Humanity is at a crossroad, which way will we choose? The crossroad paintings explore this question in the beautiful landscape of Central Victoria, personified as Irish Bridgit of the Tuatha de Danaan, clothed in the patchwork of fields and flowers. The crossroad in Irish myth is a liminal space or threshold imbued with the power of the Otherworld by the druids, the first deep ecologists.
“Will we listen to nature and change our relationship to the natural world in time or will the economy and battle cries win out and our civilisation crumble into ruins, to be reclaimed by nature. Australian Ballet Company will perform Harliquinade in 2022 and inspired these Commedia del Arte figurines to provide a range of emotional states from tearful Pierrot to the bombastic Pulcinella. They are as relevant a description of human folly today as they were in 17th Century Europe.
“Both depth psychology and Eastern philosophy point to the goal of awakening from personal identity to an expansive view of interbeing, a term coined by Thich Nhat Hahn to describe the interdependence of all nature. In the same way James Lovelock named the earth, Gaia and theorized that it is a self-regulating system. The mutations of Covid could be seen as a regulation of human impact on all of earth’s systems.”
Pictured: a fanciful view of Glenlyon landscape and ceramic figurines of the critters at the crossroad
www.francesguerinartist.com
