Victoria Arney. The Dream Life of Debris

Victoria’s practice is heavily invested within the craft of traditional drawing methods, ranging from drawings, stencils and etchings through to painting. She uses this rich history within print making to construct a conversation between the old and new, while using subject matter to describe this break in nature. The show is a result of three years of focus within this discipline of print and drawing. The work itself consists of landscapes drawn with Arney's distinct style and touch. The sources of these prints are images found on the Internet, of contemporary landscapes, vast seas, forests, ruin, decay and disasters. These landscapes hold the sublime nature of catastrophe, places fractured by physical shifts.

Discourse surrounding a break in nature and a sense of tragedy or scarring is explored through Arney’s consistent use of motif throughout her work. Recurring elements such as dust, ash, vapour and smoke present themselves as a form of exposing and concealing nature in its transformative state. Showing nature as particles comminuted and broken down, fragments that connect with a sense of whole, while exposing its fragility. The visual motif of the circle or oval interrupts and introduces a rogue element into the landscape, raising questions surrounding reality, representation and space.

These circles hover above the work, creating an indefinable space that interrupts the work and provides a viewing point outside of the landscape. These circles also present a paradox within the work. They illuminate while they obscure, while complete as full stops, they represent cyclical energy and time as a never ending or a complete whole. The shifting and ruined landscapes are a result of energy paused, and made visible by cycles of movement and subsequently destruction. Ultimately leaving us in a precarious state within this fragmented world of a digital nature, where we struggle to place ourselves within our natural landscape.