HANGING BY A THREAD

Paul is a mixed media artist inspired by scientific images and what they reveal about our perceptions of and relationship to the world around us.

The scientific method necessarily reduces complexity to manageable dimensions so the macro can be studied in the micro. There is little point in a map on scale of one-to-one, but there is unavoidable bias in the choice of what to exclude.

Paul’s current works explore two troves of scientific slides – the lifelong collection of a plant biologist, and the entire audio-visual collection of a Victorian secondary school from 1975.

While seeking to document and explore the world’s creations, these collections inevitably record the shadow left by the eye, hand and mind of their creators. Students in 1975 were taught that “Man has learned to adapt the environment to his needs and so is largely independent”.  The plant biologist studies the resilience of introduced crops ignoring the indigenous grasses growing alongside.

In the present exhibition Paul pulls on these threads to see what happens.