Concrete is an unlikely home to an ecosystem of plants

Jamie North develops his living sculptural kinds close to the contrast involving mother nature and market, progress and decay, progress and collapse, in Portal 2022 (illustrated), two round concrete columns composed of solid concrete with aggregates of industrial stays open up up to an emergent tree habitat, presenting an unlikely house to a variety of plant species indigenous to Brisbane. In their crevices and cavities, an ecosystem of indigenous crops appears, bit by bit and against the odds, to be using keep. See North’s perform mature and evolve in the exhibition ‘Air’ at present at the Gallery of Modern Artwork in Brisbane.

Air | Timed tickets on sale
GOMA, until 23 April 2023

Look at: Jamie North demonstrates on ‘Portal’

https://www.youtube.com/view?v=G6cbF9xJ8QE

Above time, the all-natural and person-made elements of the sculptures develop into entwined as the plants find out organic advancement lines and investigate their partially eroded, put up-industrial surroundings. Versus the monumentality and rigid geometries of the concrete columns, the gradual, encroaching development of the indigenous vegetation performs a tentative re-greening. Creeping vines and lithophytes (plants that improve on rock) climb the towering buildings, featuring times of lush development cradled by the cracked and crumbling forms. It results in what North refers to as ‘a residing sculptural system’, a person which, when tended with h2o and gentle, evolves consistently and in unplanned means more than the length of the exhibition.¹

Jamie North ‘Portal’

The recurrent presence of plant make any difference in North’s work is the final result of a childhood affinity with the purely natural entire world, a romance that the artist describes as ‘communicative’: ‘From an early age I have observed vegetation in an rigorous way, and my childhood reminiscences are crammed with very unique feelings all around them’.² In bringing organic and inorganic components collectively in a wealthy, unpredictable dialogue, North has commented on how his ‘redemptive re-use of the waste generated by human exercise sits along with that most definitive of regeneration procedures: the succession of nature’.³ North also draws on a 3rd ingredient — the viewer — who he invites into a symbiotic marriage with the operate.

As we interact with the plant lifestyle embedded in the twin sculptures, we participate in the reciprocal trade of gases (oxygen and carbon dioxide) that is the singular, sustaining characteristic of our interdependent romance with the all-natural earth.

Endnotes
¹ Jamie North, artist proposal for Portal 2022, QAGOMA Curatorial data files, p.2.
² Jamie North, quoted in Serena Bentley, ‘Jamie North Rock Soften 2015’, Nationwide Gallery of Victoria, 18 March 2015, , viewed May perhaps 2022.
³ North, artist proposal, p.52.

Edited extract from the accompanying exhibition publication Air available at the QAGOMA Retailer and on the web.

‘Air’ / Gallery of Contemporary Art, Gallery 1.1 (The Fairfax Gallery), Gallery 1.2 & Gallery 1.3 (Eric and Marion Taylor Gallery) / 26 November 2022 to 23 April 2023

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