Nepenthecae
Gallery 3

23.07.10 – 14.08.10
Opening: Thursday 22.07.10
Artist Talk: Saturday 07.08.10

Nepenthes or Pitcher Plants are meat-eating plants, but they are also exquisitely beautiful. Filled with sticky liquid, they seduce their prey and then, slowly consume it. There is a beautiful yet abject nature to this plant, with all its metaphorical implications.

Watercolour is a primary medium in this work, making a stain on paper that, whilst recreating the fantastical patterns and colours of the plant, also heightens its visceral and fleshy textures. The gallery will be transformed into a hothouse diorama with its various metaphors of propagation, cultivation, the rarefied and the hybrid. My aim is to create something at once beautiful yet undeniably creepy and grotesque. Something at once static yet alive and possibly even a threat.

Mila Faranov graduated from Monash University in 1992. After working extensively as a costume designer, she re-directed herself to the visual arts. In 2007 she completed a Masters of Visual Art at the VCA. She has since exhibited at Seventh, Linden and c3 galleries.