Pawpaw I Dark Flower Scarab Beetle.
A hanging installation made up of vertical dowels in the colours of the pawpaw flower is opened wide to allow visitors to enter, similar to how an insect might. The shape of the opening is perfect for the coevolved partner. In places where this beetle is extinct or should it disappear, the plant would struggle.
Pawpaw | Dark Flower Scarab Beetle was part of a body of work titled Ecological Entanglements. Through an investigation of ecological interactions, it focuses on the exploration of colour and its spatio-temporal dynamics, to reconsider its perceptual boundaries in search of new possibilities. A series of abstract interactions are presented through sculptural, photographic, moving image and sound based works, to draw attention to ecological loss and absence.
Working through a reductive process of visual abstraction, allied with shifting sound textures, what was familiar becomes strange and haunting, creating spaces where one might feel disoriented, where lines dissolve and surroundings blur. Yet, simultaneously, something new might just reveal itself – new spaces where human agency is de-centred and the entanglements across time and space become visible.