“To see the world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wildflower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.” – William Blake
Exploring Eden is the title of a series of new digital prints that reference the biological aspects of human reproduction. The central subject, the human foetus, is situated in a kaleidoscopic realm of diverse elements from a polymorphic natural world. Some float in a field of stars, surrounded by icebergs and large pollen seeds, others are cradled in tapestries of marine organisms or the shimmering petals of luminous flowers: all are expressions of a plenum, a generative matrix of life analogous to the mythological Garden of Eden. We have all, at one time or another, been impressed by the interconnectedness of disparate phenomena in the world about us and the promptings of artists, scientists, philosophers and seers have sought to articulate the implications of what many view, not merely as praiseworthy insight of perennial philosophy, but as the central theme of contemporary, post-industrial civilization. Visual artists have, of technical necessity, always been sensitive to and appreciative of the formal, structural and metaphoric compatibilities’ inherent in apparently separate and categorically dissimilar objects. In this body of recent work I have pursed this and other poetics of visual metamorphosis with the intention of exploring and making manifest the inexhaustible web of connectivity that seeks to forge an unanticipated but indissoluble unity between objects as diverse as a vast spiral arm galaxy abstracted from the discourse of cosmology and the infinitesimally small DNA double helix: the micro architect of organic life, detached similarly from its biogenetic field and represented within a context-free manifold complexity. These works propose that we are all connected and interconnected.
In his book, “The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy”, Douglas Adams poses a mischievous question, “What is the answer to the meaning of life the universe and everything”? Unfortunately the question was inadequately framed and “Deep Thought,” the purpose built super-computer took two million years to produce the totally unsatisfactory answer: “42.” Just imagine, if all the complexity of life and experience could be reduced to a couple of digits. Adam’s playfully sly critique of ‘reductionism’ as an ineffective investigative tool for unravelling the imponderables of life reflects my own view. What interests me are life’s potential for integrative and associative patterns of growth and renewal, the opportunities and hazards and the ethical and moral dimensions implicit in the new "technology of life"? As a layperson I am interested in the rapid progress in bio-genetic and recombinant DNA research.
We are entering an era, unprecedented in history where hybrid life forms are being engineered in laboratories and sophisticated techniques are deployed routinely in in-vitro fertilization clinics. Further biotech intrusion into flora and fauna has startling and far reaching implications for all life on Earth, including of course, human beings.
As an artist, with a visual perspective on these topics, I find the images of embryos and foetuses, human eggs and the paraphernalia of pipettes and Petri dishes, fascinating – In a similar vein, Frances Bacon once compared favourably the sheen of human saliva with the sensuousness of a Monet painting – the astonishing recurrence of hidden, common architectures across a range of organisms and the natural beauty of their symmetries inspire me. I also make frequent use in my work of imagery derived from clinical or scientific contexts. This is an intentional didacticism. It is through my art that I seek to propose conjectures regarding discoveries in science that effect the future of us all. It is through my work that I wish to make an informed commentary on the nature of the research that scientists are undertaking, research that my well lead to changes that have unforeseeable consequences, perhaps even bringing about a fundamental transformation to the genetic heritage of the natural world.
