Genevieve Thornton, Elise Lidgett, Michelle Mayn – Future Pr

Genevieve Thornton, Elise Lidgett, and Michelle Mayn – Future Propositions
22 Jan – 16 Feb 2022
Opening: 22 Jan 2-4pm
Street Front Space and Feature Wall
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Future Propositions presents the collective workings of regional Victorian artists Genevieve Thornton and Elise Lidgett and Aotearoa New Zealand artist Michelle Mayn. The exhibition combines sculpture, video and photography which unites these artists, just as millions of years ago Australia and Aotearoa were joined as part of Gondwana. The works are an ongoing exploration and conversation about what it means to be living and working as artists during a time of unprecedented change; a time when a global pandemic continues to sweep through the world, shining a light with more intensity on the vital issue of climate change, and the disparity between developed and developing nations. This exhibition considers our (political and) ethical relationship to the world.
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Future Propositions explores our unknown futures, speculating on life and relationships, looking to the force of the present as it writes the paths of the future.

Genevieve Thornton

Genevieve Thornton, born in Northland, New Zealand, lives and works in regional Victoria, Australia, on the traditional lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung and the Taungurung Peoples of the Kulin Nation. Genevieve’s art practice stems from encounters with place and critters in Australia and New Zealand and challenges her colonialised anthropocentrism. She looks to posthumanism, decolonialism, ecofeminism and an ethos of care to explore her relationship with the more-than-human world. Combining discarded industrial waste with living matter to construct symbiotic environments, Genevieve uses sculpture and video as a method to create speculative hybrid forms with commingling materials.

Elise Lidgett

Elise Lidgett lives in central Victoria. Her photographic work explores the relationship between humans and the natural environment through the construction of tableaus. Elise’s work explores humanity’s relationship with – and impact on – the environment and our need for a healthy planet. She explores ideas of isolation, protection and our desire to control the landscape to meet our needs. Working with both film and digital photography, visual effects are created through the shooting process rather than by computer manipulation. In her work, peace and hope are interwoven amongst despair, with the aim to encourage individuals to reconnect to the natural world.

Michelle Mayn

Michelle Mayn works primarily with harakeke, New Zealand native flax, using traditional Māori techniques of weaving, binding, twining and knotting; often incorporating found objects. Mayn’s process-based practice places primacy on materials and the actions or events of making. Detailed manual processes and time-intensive methods of making develop an intimate relationship with the natural world. Material, light, form and movement are combined to create ephemeral installations and sculptures that explore the mauri (life force) of materials beyond the world of sense perception.

Born in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland in Aotearoa, New Zealand, Mayn studied Traditional and Contemporary Māori Weaving at Unitec in 2011, mixed media at The Art Students League of New York in 2017 and holds a Masters of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology (2020). Mayn exhibits regularly in Aotearoa New Zealand.