Rachel Bacon

My current work involves an exploration of the role of drawing within broader issues concerning landscape, geology, extraction industries and the aesthetics of the climate emergency. Site visits to open-pit coal mining landscapes and research into the effects of climate warming form the starting points for semi-sculptural drawings made with graphite on crumpled paper, that always appear damaged in some way. This painstaking additive drawing process, sometimes combined with screen printing, is a counterpoint to the accelerated extractive mark-making of open-pit mining, and a means of slowing down time and allowing the audience an opportunity for a physical, sensory experience. Marks in the drawings follow patterns of crumpled paper, which would normally be discarded and thrown away. Here though the damage to the paper is revealed and made valuable through careful mark-making. Site-visits to open-pit mining areas form important sources of imagery and research for me, that is part of my long-term engagement in exploring what a nonanthropocentric approach to landscape might entail. A direct emotive connection with this damage to me seems a necessary precursor to an engagement with issues relating to climate disruption.

My hope is that viewers may take the time to slowly experience material in a way that invites an identification between their bodies and the earth, to start to conceive of another way of understanding ourselves in relation to the material that makes up the stuff of landscape. Through a felt understanding of our own vulnerability and materiality, we may be able to conceive of a decelerated, interconnected and less abusive relationship with our surroundings.