A THINKING WILD




ANN SHELTON
SRIWHANA SPONG
ISADORA VAUGHAN

 



OCTOBER 17 - NOVEMBER 21, 2024

Curated by Emily Cormack


Wildness and our wild ways are so often subject to taming, curtailing and trimming. What is felt or known, but not understood, is so often silenced. But this exhibition listens to the thinking that goes on within ideas of the wild.

The artists in this exhibition give-in to nature’s persistent chemistry, opening to the wisdom in its endless cycles, its floating seed spores and ever flowing sap and blood. A thinking wild taps into the processes of disassemblage and decomposition, isolating moments of effervesce and activity, showing the productive forces of entropy. It occupies the moments  where apples rot to jewels, grasses are no longer weeds and sap or flowers transmute into remedies.

Each of the artists in this exhibition reveal the persistent links between the sensing, alchemical body and our inextricable connection with nature. Whether it be through Ann Shelton’s photographs that illustrate lost homeopathic knowledge; Sriwhana Spong’s film and sculptures that translate knowledge from the veins of trees; or Isadora Vaughan’s sculptures that free plants from their taxonomical traps. Each of these artists discuss the rebellion of nature and celebrate its innate knowledge defying the organising forces of urban civility.


Ann Shelton is represented by Two Rooms, Auckland
Sriwhana Spong is represented by Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland
Isadora Vaughan is represented by Station Gallery, Sydney & Melbourne