statement

Alison Williams

Gardening negotiates the boundary between imposing actions and reacting to nature's wildness. My art practice is informed by years of gardening , art and gardening navigate the tension between an expected and a disrupted path. This has become synonymous with my pursuit of what constitutes beauty today, I have come to realize that my role is that of a facilitator. I set parameters and initiate material intersections. Then I am engaged in a relationship with how the materials assert themselves and move beyond the imposed parameters. I find these perpetual tensions beautiful.

My investigation of the potential of art objects and the garden as subject and matter has meant that the line between garden and art has become almost nonexistent. Burying photographs, decaying canvases, allowing dirt, water, and plants to create marks on different surfaces; to which I then introduce spray paint, stickers and transfers, forces me to further address the definition of what constitutes an art object. The results are drawings splattered by rain, unburied canvases, pigments from boiled flowers, plant matter sandwiched between glass sheets and books made from decayed photographs. This ephemera and evidence, I collect and display individually or in file cabinets and glasshouses.