SCULPTURE
SCULPTURE
PAINT & INK
PAINT & INK
PAINT & INK
CV
CV
CV
THE NATURE OF WANTING - ARTIST STATEMENT
‘The Nature of Wanting’ is a body of work that addresses the unsustainable consumption of the human race. As a species people continuously process resources of social, environmental and economic value with little regard for the future. Materials are extracted, refined and transformed into fleeting 'objects of desire'. Though a face-paced lifestyle only encourages a focus on the final product, their consumers have become detached from the process that created them. Resulting in a reduced appreciation between these 'objects of desire' and the methods used to create them. A disassociation that contributes to a wasteful attitude towards both labour and environmental resources.
This exhibition explores human body as a machine that seeks out and consumes through unsustainable resource gathering processes. Representing all 'objects of desire' is a small stepped pyramid that appears in several of the works. Whether through representation or suggestion, human presence provides context and narrative for this pyramid to generate discussion of humanity’s consumption habits.
THE NATURE OF WANTING - ARTIST STATEMENT
‘The Nature of Wanting’ is a body of work that addresses the unsustainable consumption of the human race. As a species people continuously process resources of social, environmental and economic value with little regard for the future. Materials are extracted, refined and transformed into fleeting 'objects of desire'. Though a face-paced lifestyle only encourages a focus on the final product, their consumers have become detached from the process that created them. Resulting in a reduced appreciation between these 'objects of desire' and the methods used to create them. A disassociation that contributes to a wasteful attitude towards both labour and environmental resources.
This exhibition explores human body as a machine that seeks out and consumes through unsustainable resource gathering processes. Representing all 'objects of desire' is a small stepped pyramid that appears in several of the works. Whether through representation or suggestion, human presence provides context and narrative for this pyramid to generate discussion of humanity’s consumption habits.
THE NATURE OF WANTING - ARTIST STATEMENT
‘The Nature of Wanting’ is a body of work that addresses the unsustainable consumption of the human race. As a species people continuously process resources of social, environmental and economic value with little regard for the future. Materials are extracted, refined and transformed into fleeting 'objects of desire'. Though a face-paced lifestyle only encourages a focus on the final product, their consumers have become detached from the process that created them. Resulting in a reduced appreciation between these 'objects of desire' and the methods used to create them. A disassociation that contributes to a wasteful attitude towards both labour and environmental resources.
This exhibition explores human body as a machine that seeks out and consumes through unsustainable resource gathering processes. Representing all 'objects of desire' is a small stepped pyramid that appears in several of the works. Whether through representation or suggestion, human presence provides context and narrative for this pyramid to generate discussion of humanity’s consumption habits.
Harrison Waed See
The series of paintings titled ‘Far-Away Island’ is a fictional island inhabited by five ‘peoples’ (green, red, orange, blue and purple) living, working and travelling between the island’s five respective provinces. These paintings piece together a fragmented and non-linear story of interconnecting trade, industry and conflict. The island’s mythology integrates videogame tropes into my approach to painting as a storytelling medium. As such, ‘Far-Away Island’ is conceived as a series of videogame screenshots that present a multiplicity of potential pathways, choices and determinations to follow. ‘Far-Away Island’ emerged in response to my experiences of cross-cultural collaboration with local and international artists during the COVID-19 pandemic. These collaborations were prompted by a curiosity about cultural difference, as well as an interest in mythology and reverence for myth’s ability to shape people’s views, attitudes and beliefs. The contemporary mythology developed in this series is directly informed by my encounters with plurality, incommensurability and divergence during cross-cultural collaboration through the period of my PhD research. To honour the collaborating artists who shared in encounters that directly informed specific works, their names feature in the extended titles of particular paintings—inspired by Francis Bacon’s 1953 painting, ‘Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X’. The title, ‘Far-Away Island’, is a reference to Australia as the culturally diverse, yet tension-filled, colonial context in which these collaborations took place. In this way, ‘Far-Away Island’ is also a mythological response to contemporary Australia—its histories, geographies and communities—that explores notions of cultural identity, hybridity and tensions inherent to multiculturalist spaces.
Photographs: Patricia Amorim
