Congratulations to Shona Wilson who has been awarded the People’s Choice Award in the Environmental Art & Design Prize at Manly Art Gallery and Museum for her incredible work ‘Seeding/Receding’.
These works on paper hold over 100 seeds that Wilson has assembled into an organic, fluid form holding a sense of sublime serenity with nature. Regarding the work, Wilson states-
Seeds and seedpods carry within them both symbolic, real promise and hope for the restoration of the natural environment. With so much at stake in our environment these droplets filled with seeds offer abundance and biodiversity. Underlying that, the work speaks to and embodies the notion of an infinite exchange of matter between formed and formless. There is an apparent paradox in their titles, with the white paper pockets of ‘air-seeds’ titled Seeding emerge from their background seemingly ‘dissolving’ but also ‘becoming’ and similarly the actual seeds and seedpods titled Receding, seemingly solid yet also in a process of dissolving. Between these two states of being, birth and death dance their timeless pas de deux in which we are thoroughly entwined. Although each appears self-contained, together they dance with the perpetual movement of change and carry the potential flourishing for us all on this beautiful planet Earth.
