April
Winter
I, Vanitas
The Virgin and The Locust
The Virgin and The Locust explores the global infatuation with youthfulness and innocence as well as its predatory nature to consume and destroy these qualities in young women. The flowers cast in resin symbolise the attempt to put an end to aging and the pressure for women to stay forever youthful. Among the fresh white flowers, including white lilies a symbol of innocence and virginity are many predatory and ravaging insects. The locust swarm consumes everything in its path symbolising our consumption and acute scrutiny of the physical appearance of women.
Temptations Of The Flesh
Temptations Of The Flesh explores the symbol of sugar and its horrifying history and its present bittersweet abundance. Preagricultural humans received all their sugars from unrefined sources from things like fruits and honey (represented by the honeybees on the right cake).
The first granulated sugar was produced 2,600 years ago but remained in such small quantities around the world it could never have been considered a staple food product. Until the 18th and 19th centuries when Europeans maddening lust for the sweet crystals compelled them to establish a global network of crimes against humanity, in the form of slave labour (represented by the chains made of sugar in the foreground and the giant African ants on the left cake).
This image of enslaved people working the cane fields to feed the elites appetite is much different than the cutsie cheeked children in advertisements for sugar cereal in the 1950’s and is different than how we view sugar in present day with the rising health risks from over consumption, symbolized here by the silver grillz which represent both rotten teeth and wealth.
The Pomegranate and The Unicorn
The Pomegranate and The Unicorn explores the theme of corruption using classical symbols and inspiration from the unicorn tapestries.
In folklore it is said that a unicorn can only be caught and captured by the innocence of a virgin. In the tapestries the king of England lures the unicorn to its death using such method and it bleeds pomegranate seeds, a symbol of corruption from the Greek myth of Persephone and the underworld.
The unicorn is represented by the white hoof, the quartz horn and the venison meat which I acquired from a local hunter. I further portrayed corruption by hand casting 30 Tyrian Shekel coins, matching the type and number of coins that Jesus was betrayed by Judas 2,000 years ago.
Pomp and Splendour
Pomp and Splendour explores greed and the tendency for wealth to accumulate into fewer and fewer hands. Creating monstrous empires of luxury, impossible to spend in a lifetime on the backs of more and more impoverished people.
My face reflected in the silver fruit to the left symbolizes self-reflection wherein the pear and apple themselves symbolize collecting things that do not sustain health.
Hidden among the silver riches are two spiders, including a poisonous black widow which are commonly interpreted as a symbol of suffering and death, suggesting death comes for all no matter their affluence and the wealth does not follow one to the grave.
The World Is Your Oyster
The World Is Your Oyster explores the expression that, essentially, gives humanity reign over every aspect of the world without consequence which humans have been doing for thousands of years.
The following passage from the book of Genesis describes how at least part of humanity has viewed this reign, “so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground”.
By feeling this sense of entitlement over the world and its creatures we have wreaked havoc over most ecosystems both on land and underwater. We are now facing the long-awaited consequences of our actions through crop instability and climate change.
Don’t Ever Antagonize The Horns (D.E.A.T.H)
Don’t Ever Antagonize The Horns explores the symbolism around death and being in the “winter of one’s life”. The dried plants show this “winter” and decay as well as pain in the form of spiky thistles and thorns and the soothing of pain in the form of poppy pods. In the foreground lay a ring of Black Dahlias which have a significant correlation with death as a famous unsolved murder is named after the flower.
Infront of these flowers on the left are small viles filled with Belladonna, Henbane, and Datura Inoxia, these are all medicinal tinctures in very small doses but turn into poisons in larger. There are also poisonous mushrooms hidden within the photograph, which I foraged and identified myself.
The hand poured candles I made show the passage of time of one’s life and inevitably death.
The small, deceased rodents I found around my cabin on Mayne Island which I personally do not see these deaths in an all-negative light because wherever there is an abundance of life there will always be an abundance of death.
On the left side beside my face is a metal identification tag. It’s the tag from my father’s ashes and represents my own personal experience with death.
The First Law Of Nature
“The First Law Of Nature” refers to a quote by Samuel Butler about self-preservation and how a living creature will always choose their own survival over anything else.
The photograph explores humanity’s search for immortality and eternal youth, attempts for which go as far back as 200 BCE during the Qin Dynasty and made use of substances that in fact had adverse effects to human health such as Mercury. Many powerful leaders died early deaths consuming such elixirs of life.
The search for immortality has not ceased in modern times. By some statistics, depending on your definition of anti-aging, the global market for anti-aging cosmetics is about 47 billion US dollars per year and rising, which includes consumers as young as preteens and children who are keen to nip aging in the bud.
The prospect of finding a cure to aging is seemingly within grasp to more than just emperors and kings thanks to bio engineering and technology. Huge scientific studies are underway trying to identify and reverse the cause of aging.
Cryopreservation is another experimental route wealthy individuals are taking to ensure their best chances for immortality even in advanced age. By freezing their bodies and sometimes just their brain they hope to preserve the tissue long enough until a cure to aging is found and their deaths can be reversed.
This photograph depicts many symbols of youth and evanescence such as fruit, flowers, smoke, and butterflies. All of which have been preserved and either literally or figuratively, frozen in time.