Durham 
Art Gallery

Artists work across boundaries when challenging the status quo. Boundaries of social discourse, relationships, geologies and the subtle expectations of conformity by peers. Making statements about the turbulence and dangers of our current existence is the responsibility of every generation as an act of preservation and survival. This responsibility is a challenge that is manifest through artistic intention, process, material, form and outcome. How does and how can the art work vitally influence individual and societal behaviours?

 

The planet, environment, nature, Earth (and its many other contentious names and concepts) struggles as the result of collective human actions. As artists, we attempt to take responsibility by considering actions that are sustainable, not to us, but to ecological integrity. We pause and reflect upon our processes and place limits on our human involvement. This form of art-making considers boundaries in conformity as our process delves deep into building supportive community structures and relational exchanges with humans and non-humans, more than with genre-based techniques or following existing pathways of creativity set forth by previous curators or arts movements. 

 

Our collective arts process considers life and land, choosing not to follow or adhere to those that have extracted and commodified all so-called resources. We deeply contemplate our own feelings, actions and interactions in an effort to decentralize our human perspective and prop up non-human entities, subjectivities, agencies, which demonstrates our innate relatedness with the broader natural world.  Conceptual or real independence and individualism only exists due to our biological interconnectedness that developed over millions of years. Art is a uniquely human process that exists in our daily lives, but we should not lose sight that we are only uniquely human because of our evolutionary, ecological entanglement here on Earth. Art exists because that’s what the Earth wanted.   

 

Will we survive? Will art survive? Can we exist in a more respectful and balanced manner with all living entities? Perhaps, it is our small, simple and humble intentions, choices and focus that will profoundly inspire and support, or dramatically impact future generations.