When two worlds merge it is fascinating watching what hybridisation emerges from the dynamic.

Ross Hucks’ Wallflower charts the intrinsic struggle that ensues when two very different forms of existence still requiring the same sustenance clash head on.

In the works Ribbonwood and Native Frangipani, the domination of conformity of geometric design, plying warm allusions to the work of ex-pat Australian artist Jeffrey Smart, captures the way human perceptions of development and progress literally bulldoze natural worlds and energies.

Where traces of the latter remain here, as there, it is in a state diminished by oppression.

Inflamed and Abbott Street and both possess a festering sense of intrusion from each perspective – of humanity and of nature.

A vicious edge to both palette and texture leave viewers in little doubt about the impact of humanity’s footprint on the planet and its own psyche.

Conveying the need to reinvest the organic aspect of the natural order, Tagging Cape Trib and From Banks to Banksy seek a sense of creative energy rather than the prerogatives of pure construction.

In built, urban environments graffiti and tagging serve the purpose of confounding homogenisation as does the unwieldy, untrammelled growth of a fig tree rooting down through a façade or gutter.

I’ve Always Been a Cruiser Man presents the doubleedged sword of degradation through devotion, how an environment can be loved to death, part of the road trip background scenery or a casualty of global declines of non-renewable resources.

The solid lines of the vehicle juxtapositions tartly with the smooth curl of leaf and petal, again subjugated by technology.

An eerie blending of floral motif and vivid interpretation of urban cuneiform, of delicate line and blunt, fierce commentary Wallflower captures the dichotomies that can doom or deliver.

- Karen van Harskamp

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