PENNY COSS
Piecemeal Ecologies: possibilities for patterning
Noting what is absent in the landscape comes from observing that which is present. My interests in the geology of two residencies I recently undertook in remote North Iceland and The Pilbara, WA provided a conceptual framework for this show relating to the notion of time and duration. A type of psychogeography the influence of the geographical environment on the mind, my walks in these charged landscapes challenged my sense of the familiar resulting in an anxious kind of internal disconnect. Then the physical landscape of vast bright green moss covered nubby mounds of newly formed black lava fields in Iceland covered the island seemed preternatural. The billions of years of red iron oxide flattened rock in the Pilbara in Australia was charged with a deeply imbedded cultural history that was not my own.
This disconnect for me is a form of grief. Grief and the landscape but with the possibility of connection and how the landscape informs our identity continues to be played out in my art practice.
