A SIMPLE PERVERSION
Timmy MacDonald
The Art Incubator Gallery . January 26 – February 24, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 26, from 7 pm – 10 pm
Harcourt House Artist Run Centre, 3rd floor, 10215 – 112 St, Edmonton
As the primal creator, Nature could be considered the world’s most powerful and influential artist. And standing at the junction of art and nature are environmental artists, who are often balanced on an intermediary edge, searching and synthesizing creative, unimagined new ways to redefine our relationships with nature. Working with a wide range of materials – ranging from the raw, the found, to discarded – environmental art can be evocative, provocative or sublime, and oftentimes communicates an urgent message. The field is interdisciplinary in the fact that environmental artists embrace ideas from science and philosophy. The practice encompasses traditional media, new media, and critical social forms of production.
Timmy MacDonald – a Calmar-based, multi-media artist and a recent graduate from the Alberta College of Art + Design – explores, in his expressive installations, a compelling story of our interrelations with the natural environment: the ecological, geographic, political, biological and cultural. Through his traditional studio work and multi-media installations, MacDonald creates awareness, stimulates dialogue with the intention to change human’s attitude toward other species and the nature as a whole, and encourages the long-term respect for the natural systems we coexist with. Says MacDonald about his work/installation entitled “A Simple Perversion” in relation to human’s attitude toward nature: “…. Man’s need to control the nature and shape it to his/her will has only succeeded in making perversions of nature. It can be seen when a piece of wood milled, planed, and sanded is placed next to a stump withered, twisted, and rough. These two objects are the same material, but are drastically different; one natural, the other a simple perversion …”.