“Persistent Nature”
Simon Cuthbert
20 Feb → 6 Mar 2004

My current art practice is concerned with the cross-coding of the natural and the cultural. At present our relationship with nature could best be described as ambivalent. At worst anxious and despairing. Through my work I seek to reveal flaws in the idealism of Utopia and Arcadia. Persistent Nature is a series of photographic investigations of environmental “unrealities” that explore the ideal quality of nature expressed as simulacra in social, built and urban environments. The imagery locates itself in restaurants, markets, commercial and corporate centres and public spaces that feature advertising and other forms of visual representation. Museum dioramas, zoological enclosures and taxonomic artefact also form part of this investigation. This subject matter is culturally non-specific and ubiquitous and reminds us of the mechanisms and extent of 21st century ecocide and alienation.