Subterra by Dan Power & Apocalypse Unfolding by Mahala Hill

Overview

Two solo exhibitions by Canberra artists, Dan Power and Mahala Hill.

Both artists examine the natural world in the Age of the Anthropocene.

Working in hyper-detailed illustrations, sculpture, bones and taxidermy, award-winning artist and evolutionary biologist, Dan Power, centres on creating a new natural history where "the complexity and flux of the natural world in the anthropocene feel intangible, whilst threads of death and decay lurk in our subconscious. Subterra digs deeper, where this enigmatic underground transforms ecological grief into fertile hope."

Mahala Hill's exquisite ceramic works explore curiosity, wonder, beauty, death, the apocalypse and how by using these motifs she can raise awareness of pressing environmental issues. Hill’s practice has been centred around the process of the ‘burn out’. A ‘burn out’ is the remnant shell-like form that emerges from inside a layer of liquid clay after the combustible organic plant material has incinerated. The residual matter is a ghostly, shell-like phantom form or ‘burnt out’ spectre, simultaneously evoking traces of life and a loss.