Mandorla Art Award

Lucille Martin –  Selected Finalist

Micah, transformation through Nature – Lucille Martin ( WA )
iPhoneography, Photo media, Archival Print on Acrylic face mount

Size: Variable – Cut in form of Crucifix

Price : $3,900 Available ( Postage/Freight Extra )

Micah’s passage spoke to me about a spiritual relationship to nature and the pressing need for a unified and universal connection of healing and repair for our planet.  Thematically the imagery is underpinned by my concern for our environment and all species, in relation to recent catastrophic fires of 2019 -20, resulting from climate change.

The multiple images throughout the work were captured while walking and photographing the stunning and at times confronting natural landscape during awarded AIR’s and recent field trips in Australia and New Zealand.

From erupting geysers in Rotorua, New Zealand, fire ravaged terrain in The Great Southern Region of Western Australia, to rare plants found in Hobart’s Botanical gardens, the compelling universal shape of  ‘a cross ’ evolved unconsciously in its layered construction.

Configured through the artistic process of mirrored and reflective layering, I allowed the natural patterning and subtle colouring of sulphur pools and sunsetting skies, to symbolise the often delicate and unnoticed presence of our above and under-worlds to provide a sense of emotive ambiguity.

Positioned within the centre, where the vertical and horizontal lines meet, I placed a Cactus Succulent, iPhone-captured during a visit to a friends garden in Byron Bay, NSW. This species of plant provides a symbolic and looming reference to portals beyond.

Even more compelling during the artistic process was a desire to find a surface, frame or mount for light to pass through the criss-crossing cuts, lines and edges of the sculptural shape, illuminating the sublties of delicate flowers and hues of a heating earth to penetrate beyond the material surface.

While it is well known that the cross is one of the most recognized religious symbols in the world, my methodology, inspired through the theme, was positioned more about the focus of a cross informed through a framework of coordinates and crossing lines orientated within space and time and importantly signifying points of intersection between man and nature. All the more engaging as our world transforms as a result of the current universal pandemic.