According to the writer and philosopher Ernst Jünger, the Forest is a place of existential freedom.
He developed this idea as a metaphor for being able to be part of a system, but also to concurrently be able to maintain one's individuality.
'Dimensions of irrationality and myth are at home in the forest, as the irrational nourishes the capacity for independence'.
Lalique crystal, gold plated bronze, painted wood, pheasant feather, acrylic glass 290x380x200mm
Artist: Myvanwy Gibson 2017
Via the reassembling of owned objects - subconscious ideas, thoughts and concepts are unearthed.
This is a work from the 'Excavation' series. There are 4 works in the series: Aegis, Bladerunner, Amphisbaena and Incensus. The artist proposes that the re-collecting of one's self aids the process of social evolution.
The work is named after the Aegis - a protective shield or animal skin from greek mythology.
In occult fields the snake is a symbol of the creative life force, whilst pheasants are considered to be symbols of sexuality, power and ego. The pheasant neither sings nor flies much, and unlike other birds, nests on the ground rather than in trees. For these reasons it is said to be disconnected from the spiritual rather than being part of it.
Myvanwy Gibson reflects on the relationship between technology and painting, the virtual and the real, and the natural and artificial.
Her practice with technology, an interest that was born at the beginning of her career as a video artist, developed through intense experimentation with the relationship between sound and technology to create video images.
She conceives the digital as a language that introduces different fruition parameters from traditional languages. For the artist, nature is evocation not imitation, a non-anthropocentric art where human experience, technology and the natural world intertwine, becoming the themes on which the aesthetics of the artist concentrate.
She has exhibited in numerous private and public areas such as The Australian Centre of the Moving Image, Melbourne; The International Association of Empirical Aesthetics, New York; and The Autonomous Biennale, in Venice. Her research papers have been published in Academia Letters magazine and in the IAEA New York and Vienna proceedings.