Ettie Spencer Oh! Mother

1 July-12 August  

Ettie Spencer  is currently exhibiting at the Dick Institute. Based in Kilmarnock, the Dick Instiute holds two art galleries and three museums.

Ettie Spencer undertook postgraduate studies at Edinburgh College of Art and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2001. She has received several other accolades including the Royal Scottish Academy Chalmers Bursary in 2003. Her work has been shown at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh and she has a strong reputation for realising ambitious projects that demand co-operation from disparate bodies and organisations. She is currently represented by Hameslevak, London.

Her work addresses Postmodern popular culture and the state of the world today, as reflective of an arrogance, a sense of disorder, and a lack of a common purpose.

Spencer thematically explores the relationship between our urban life and that of nature.  The gap that exists between a consumerist society and a way of life that involves working with the land is ever widening.  How can we remain in touch with our roots and find a meaningful way forward without the feel and smell of the earth and everything that comes from it?  How can we avoid exploitation, wars, famine and destruction that inevitably follow this dislocation?

By playing with the juxtaposition of urban/rural, natural/man-made, Spencer seeks to raise questions and also to explore the aesthetics, the stimulation and the pleasures that come with the harmonizing of these disparate elements. Her work suggests that an immediate engagement with these issues is essential if we are to survive as a species.

Coupled with these environmental concerns, she also focuses on issues of containment and dispersal. By looking at our response to the environment, she considers the dilemma of what freedom is and how it depends on the institutions we have created for ourselves.   

WHICH WAY 2 considers the ongoing struggle to find a sustainable relationship between us and our environment. Spencer attacks the arrogance of humankind by making plain the way in which we attempt to shape the natural world, at the expense of all other species, in order to accommodate our ideas and feed our own needs. A massive arrow -shaped cage filled with live finches sits heavily in the gallery space, the light mobility of the birds contrasting with the weighty and industrialised arrow, questioning the balance of power between the two.

Could it be that the arrow, symbol of clearly defined direction, universally recognized and followed, may not win in the end? Or that despite its being so firmly tethered to the ground it may still take off, in spite of our desires to control it.

Opposite the arrow, a wall of stacked cages dominates the left side of the space. Spencer has propagated cuttings of the notoriously voracious Japanese Knotweed plant within each cage. There is huge concern about this ‘alien’ species that is ‘invading’ our common land. Its seeds are sterile because the plants are all cloned from a single female and it is therefore spread only by fragments of the root system. It has been described as ‘the largest female in the world’ and, when left unchecked, it dominates its environment to the detriment of native and other species. Notwithstanding their indoor location and minimal amounts of earth in which to grow, the plants simply adapt and burst out of the cages, thriving in spite of their containment.

It has long been our practice to ‘control’ some infestations and to encourage others. In reality, our entire landscape is shaped by imported plants and animals, and our eco-system is dependent upon them all. This implication made by the work finds timely parallels with the paranoia surrounding the influx of ‘aliens’ or human incomers into this country, and the concerns of some people that these incomers are taking over our resources. Spencer questions whether this mistrust and paranoia taps into a more fundamental fear that as we steadily take more from the planet, there is a very real possibility that (mother) nature will eventually retaliate and ultimately win the battle for survival.

For more information go to the East Ayrshire Council website.