Gaby Solly’s thought provoking artwork interrogates our relationship with trees and questions our societal and personal constructs around the idea of ‘enough’.
Ecologically & socially engaged artist - Gaby Solly, will be showcasing her work in the Window Galleries. Working flexibly in a variety of media and materials, she moves between the poetic, the participative, the political, the performative and the pragmatic. Gaby Solly pays homage to Mother Earth.
“I am distressed by the state of upheaval in the world, both socially and environmentally. Our ‘industrial-growth’ society is divorced from nature, and forgetting this crucial interdependence now threatens our very existence."
"In 2019 I Declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency as an artist: I believe that the power we can conjure as a collective, creative voice has the potential to reach so much further than our individual ones can."
The work on display include:
One With the Earth - One With Each Other is an urgent call for solidarity with Indigenous land-defenders.
Dis/Connection (work in progress) is an invitation to open up to our state of disconnection, as children of the Industrial Growth Society.
Enough (work in progress) is an action-research experiment that collects the conversations and an embodied measurement of individuals in clay.
Spoonfed considers those words, absorbed from birth, that constantly whet our appetite to acquire and consume.
Empty is the space inside delivery boxes… it wonders about the value of the original contents? To the shopper, to the corporation, to those involved in manufacture and delivery, to the planet?
About
I am an ecologically and socially engaged artist, working flexibly in a variety of media and materials. I move between the poetic, the participative, the political, the performative and the pragmatic. I pay homage to Mother Earth.
My practice centres around notions of connection, exploring how beings navigate a sense of self and community, and the interaction between these two places of belonging.
My work interrogates the precious and precarious gift of our existence at this time of social and environmental unravelling. It is my response to both the myriad injustices and extravagant wastefulness of our industrial growth society and the abundance, resilience and beauty of life on Earth.
I want to better understand what is truly of value - and to share what I find through my art. I wonder how we might best turn our attention, energy, resources and care towards those things that enable life to thrive and which cultivate love and deep joy for humanity.
Find out more about Gaby Solly
Find out more about Culture Declares Emergency
Into Connection runs from 20th March - 9th April 2023
📍Fusion Arts #WindowGalleries, Friars Entry. Oxford, OX1 2BZ
Disconnection photos taken by Emily Walmsley
Connection photos taken by Shona Kitson
