Knit one, Pearl one, 2011

Knit one, Pearl one, 2011 This body of work explores the artist’s own relationship to the landscape; its role in defining personal identity, and the notion that all perceptions of nature are in some way mediated by our culture. We use landscape to find a sense of identity so that it becomes more than just what we see – it becomes a way of seeing. Landscape is a cultural construct, obscured by layers of meaning that reflect our own cultural preoccupations and anxieties. We can learn about ourselves by considering how we have come to see and make landscapes as a result of our shared systems of belief and ideology. These images explore the artist’s own relationship with the landscape. By becoming actively involved with the forest space, by inscribing on it and weaving into it she builds a personal experience and interaction with the space. The wool marks a trajectory, a slow delicate interlacing of branches and twigs woven and linked together to form a line of movement, a trace of a figure passing through, a record of an interaction like an ephemeral self-portrait. The wool weaves, sews, threads and connects the artist tangibly to the landscape for a short time, catching and locating her within it. The process of ‘making’ in these images and the craft material used reflects upon the ‘constructed’ nature of landscape and explores the boundaries between the natural and the cultural, this ‘shaped perception’, asking whether we can ever access the natural world on its own terms.