Mark, Touch, Press

August, 2016 

This installation was created specifically for the Eightwonder Summer Show at 44AD artspace, responding to the question 'Where is your humanity?'

Mark, Touch, Press explores patterns found in fingerprints. imitations of prints having been drawn directly on to the petals in watercolour, oil paint, graphite and fine pen drawings. The image of a fingerprint caught my eye for its beautiful intricate patterns and drew me in with its sense of both identity and anonymity, the curving lines both revealing the identity of a person and hiding that information within it.

The installation of 11 pinned petals incorporated manipulation of this natural material through pressing, pinning and mark making - looking at our ever contradictory relationship with the natural world. These petals hung pinned like specimens on the wall, illustrating our awe and fascination with the natural world in all its fragility and immenseness, yet our ruthlessness to so readily manipulate or disregard it.

Distorting the un-telling lines I mimicked the distortion of overlapping and faint fingerprints such as those found in a crime scene; our prints, our marks, our traces, all over the natural world. The notions of the personal and the anonymous suggest both an individual and collective responsibility.

The fragile petals hung vulnerable in the space, unframed and unprotected, this encouraged visitors to feel an awareness of their impact on the natural forms - the work moving in response to a slight breath or breeze.

Humanity is so often considered as a separate entity to the natural world yet we are very much a part of it.

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