Creek
5-Screen Video Installation, Multi-Channel Sound
Creek takes as its subject the ways in which our values inform our aesthetic responses to nature. More specifically, our idealised conception of nature, the places we look for it, and what we wish to find.
In creek, I take a close look at the weed-choked and intermittent Riddell’s Creek as it flows past the back of my house. Polluted and flowing at a trickle, Riddell’s Creek is packed with life which, in its diversity and tenacity, is as beautiful as any other of nature’s expressions. With more and more of our collective energy turned towards the problems of a changing climate and diminishing bio-diversity, our engagement with the natural environment becomes increasingly nuanced and our sense of the ‘right and wrong’ types of nature necessarily evolves.
Trading upon art’s capacity to question and see anew, creek proposes that whilst wicked problems necessarily look complex and fill us with dread, they might yet be beautiful. In their precariousness and messiness, they may offer our moment something more than the idealised pristine wild. Certainly, they challenge us to evolve with them.