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Human Nature |
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Description
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'The consummation of this striving for perfection is to reflect a paradise on earth.'
(quotation from Marc Treib, Sources of Significance: Gardens in Our Time, 1991)
Throughout history, gardens often presented desirable environmental qualities missing from the everyday lives of people. In dry climates, they were rich with vegetation and flush with water. In forested areas, they were primarily cleared areas. Gardens offered an alternative to the everyday, a form that embodied an aspiration for physical need, or social and metaphysical striving. Adopting the term 'Topophilia' to describe the bond between people and their environs, Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that our perceptions, attitudes and values - in effect, who we are - come to be reflected in the space around us. What is it, then, about human nature which drives us to search for this perfect, ideal world, while for much of the time we seem to have lost our conscious awareness that this search might ultimately be destroying us?
Apart from the photographic images seen below (which are mounted and presented with a silicon diamond finish), integral to this work is a video diptych which shows a lawn sprinkler and an oil donkey (in motion and with audio track). A still version of this video piece is shown below.
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