Rowan Corkill- Elephants Breath
Solaris is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Rowan Corkill. The exhibition explores the turbulent relationship humans have had with the natural world in both the past and present-day through pastimes and consumerist products, as well as ideas surrounding our mortality as a species.
The series of new works on show at Solaris has a strong emphasis on hunting imagery, which is displayed through Victorian prints from sports publications and early 20th-century photographs. These images play into question the morality of Hunting as a sport and the effect it has had on species populations, but also the effect that we now have on nature in the modern world, where consumerism and human expansion are now far more dangerous to species populations than hunting pastimes. Images of animals in the throws of death are placed over single household paint colours, which have each been titled with the name of the animal or its parts. The use of animal names for these products in a sense humanises the natural world, turning the wild into the domestic and placing it within the artificial man-made environment.
Marbling prints have been incorporated within several new works and have become a central motif in current works. Shell marbling, with its organic forms, has a duality between life and death. On one hand, the forms of marbling have a strong resemblance to rot, decay and mortification. The varied forms, it creates are not dissimilar to congealing matter. On the other hand, the marbling patterns could be seen as a representation of life, with each print teaming with imperfect circular forms, reminiscent of singular cells under a microscope. A series of custom marbling prints have been created for the exhibition (Lividity), each containing a selection of colours which naturally occur through the different stages of decomposition in human flesh. Many of these colours are not dissimilar to those of the household paints that adorn the walls of homes. Death as a natural process is something which most of us know very little about. We learn about how life is formed, but very little about when life ends. Death within nature is an important factor in natural cycles and the death of one organism supports the life of others. Human beings, however, are very much distanced from this important process. Our bodies are often cremated or pumped full of chemicals which harm other organisms that would naturally feed on decomposing matter. Even when these chemicals are not used, the depth in which we must legally be buried does little to support other life forms. It is this disassociation from natural processes and nature itself that has been the inevitable downfall of the human species.