
Heywood & Condie
The Postnatural Garden of Unearthly Delights, 2016
Mixed media, laminated and living trees & wild plants, textiles, soil & rock, sculpted forms, insects, animal fur, plaster, found objects, pine needles, oil paint.
12.7m (l) x 4.30 m (w) x 2.8 m (h)
Copyright The Artist
The Postnatural Garden of Unearthly Delights is a darkly theatrical, melodramatic and all-encompassing vision that caricatures our increasingly ‘de-natured’ relationship with the natural world. Far from the safety and peace...
The Postnatural Garden of Unearthly Delights is a darkly theatrical, melodramatic and all-encompassing vision that caricatures our increasingly ‘de-natured’ relationship with the natural world. Far from the safety and peace of the traditional Arcadian landscape, the artists draw on Baktin’s idea of the carnavalesque, manipulating humour and chaos to create a dystopic rendition of the airbrushed marketing of nature consumed digitally on a daily basis. Amongst this riotous synthetic vision of nature sits a tiny oasis of peace which Heywood & Condie say is a lament for our disappearing native habitats. The grossly hybridised living and the artificial is disturbingly indistinguishable: from a forest of distorted pines emerge psychedelic versions of Gong Shi, Chinese scholars’ rocks, while malevolent industrial anti-nymphs stumble through the vegetation. The artists successfully destabilise our visual perception forcing us to contemplate this total altered state.
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