The work represented in this exhibition has developed from and includes images from my previous body of work entitled ‘March of Mutability’.
Artists have always been inspired to depict the great creation stories of their day, attempting to explain our existence and make conjectures of what the future might hold. My images are in essence no different but also draw inspiration from contemporary Science’s narrative of Evolution.
To represent this biodiversity in my images I have employed cellular-like patterning to act as a metaphor for the whole of life. Some images closely represent the morphogenic patterns of aposematic animal markings, others suggest the interconnected webs of life, some loosely resemble simple life forms, perhaps evolving into more complex creatures, and finally there are some that denote the symbiotic nature of all existence. However all should be seen simply as metaphors rather than explicit representations. In addition, there is of course a parallel evolution of the visual language of the work itself.
In many of the images, including the new prints and reliefs, I have reinterpreted the way Science uses common cultural metaphors by creating appropriate symbols: the Red Queen or her crown, the Fool’s cap, a bottleneck, an inversion symbol etc., and superimposing them over my biotic patterns. All of these in some way register our human presence and the effect we are having on the life around us. Within these overlaid contours the binary patterning becomes flipped so that what was represented in black becomes white or visa versa. This inversion suggests or indeed signifies that our human behaviours are having a significant and often detrimental impact on the delicate balance that is the web of life.
Jon Buck 2022