ODETTE
FARRELL

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Since ancient times Western Culture has traditionally been opposed to Nature using a distinction (and thus disconnection) between human Culture and non- human Nature. Recognition of the deleterious consequences of the opposition between Culture and Nature (such as environmental destruction, global warming etc.) has impelled many artists to try to overcome this opposition, by using the exploration of inner (metaphysical, mental) space and outer (physical, bodily) space to undergo the rights of passage needed to find ways of communicating, communing and uniting with a natural world from which they had become disconnected.

In the exhibition Betwixt and Between ‘Culture’ and ‘Nature’, the works of the London-based artists Odette Farrell, Jonathan Roson and Anna Suwalowska constitute three different ways of redefining and revaluing Culture in relation to a non-human Nature

Farrell’s paintings and sculptures explore the increasing detachment of human beings (and thus ‘Culture’) from ‘Nature’, in terms of recent social, economic and political turmoil. In her work Farrell explores possible ways of using art to heal the wounds of disconnection from the natural world.

Roson’s sculptures explore the connections which his Asian cultural heritage and practice of horticulture have given him to the human and the non-human aspects of Nature. Roson tries to reveal the sacred through materials which until then have often been perceived (and therefore conceived) to be merely profane objects, thereby re-enchanting a world that has been disenchanted by modern mass media culture.

Suwalowska’s figurative paintings
existence by weaving multiple
landscape that are intertwined with
mythical, scientific and other cultural influences.

stories of human of imagined psychological the result of a variety of

explore narratives

reality, and

Coinciding with World Culture Day, the works in Betwixt and Between ‘Culture’ and ‘Nature’ are products of using artistic rites of passage to redefine and revalue the concepts ‘Culture’ and ‘Nature’, and thereby discover and use the previously unexplored ‘naturalcultural’ possibilities which lie betwixt and between them.