“Nepenthecae”
Mila Faranov
23 July → 14 Aug 2010

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 was transformed into a hothouse diorama with its various metaphors of propagation, cultivation, the rarefied and the hybrid – 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.