Paradise/parallax

Paradise/parallax (Copper earth rods, wildflowers and grasses within a domestic cut lawn setting.) This experimental work-in -progress (created within the artist's garden) explores a number of concerns emerging out of new work directions and referencing recent commissions in the public realm where the artwork, be this landscaping or more formal structures, contributed to urban regeneration objectives. Paradise parallax quite simply draws attention to the way in which the processes of increasingly sophisticated urban living produce a perceptual shift in relation to the natural world. It is possible to suggest that for many the pull of modernity produces equally a sense of loss, a nostalgic yearning, the desire for a more rooted sense of belonging and a return to innocence. An emotional response often articulated within the mechanisms of modernity through environmental conservation discourses. The work is created using copper earth rods (typically used in the construction industry) to form what is reminiscent of park railings, at once containing whilst protecting by excluding the human visitor, a 'domesticated' wildflower meadow. The wild is effectively caged; represented through artifice, a reminder of what may be lost forever.