Second Nature (2008)

image courtesy Hayden Fowler

Set beyond both Earth and nature, Second Nature references the space colony of human futuristic discourse…

Its inhabitants cling to remnants of life, civilisation and nature within the sparseness and austerity of the machine that supports them.

The depictions of this space slide between beauty, humour and a sense of horror, articulating the silent creeping terror of humanities ‘success’ in freeing itself from the limitations of nature and the earth.

Within these space-aged chambers, Fowler both condenses and extrapolates history. Referencing tribal costume, the prehistoric goddess-figure Venus and the gold of fallen civilizations. His handful of animal characters have survived the historic fall from animist symbols to companion animal and now accompany humanity on this journey into apparent nothingness.

Boundaries between human, animal, plant and machine are blurred. A plant lactates in unison with the breastfeeding mother, a young man shares an uncanny resemblance to his pony companion and the ship itself spews forth an abject pink substance into its cells.

Second Nature investigates the isolation of humans from each other and from the natural world, breaking down the boundaries between man, nature and machine to explore a complex interdependence between them.

. . .