(After Nature by Susan Hockaday)
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Children’s books are often not really meant for
children. For example, in the Wizard of
Oz, did you ever wonder why Dorothy is accompanied by a tin man, a scarecrow
and a lion? Apparently the author, Frank
Baum, was a believer in the hugely popular Theosophy movement of the late
1800s. This was a spiritual development
movement created by Madame Blavatsky, who wrote that the human mind must pass
through stages she labeled (for some reason) mineral, vegetable and animal. Before
true awareness and fulfillment might occur, one had to go through each of these
stages. So we get the Tin Man as
Dorothy’s mineral capacity, the Scarecrow as her vegetable capacity and the
Lion as her animal capacity, all leading her to the Wizard.
I mention this because Susan Hockaday, in her “After
Nature” show at Soho20, calls one of her pieces: Mineral, Vegetable, Animal,
Plastic. I’m guessing that to a
Theosophite this would be a bit counterintuitive and pretty much mess up the
whole spiritual equation – unless the Wizard symbolized the same thing as
plastic…I don’t know. But in that
particular piece by Hockaday, she is literally concerned about the fact that
our plastic trash is being integrated into the food chain and, ultimately,
absorbed by humans. So the food cycle
also now includes plastic (which breaks down into little particles in the ocean
before being ingested by fish) whether we like it or not. We dump our plastic
garbage, hope it disappears, and then we eat it later.
(Mineral, Vegetable, Animal, Plastic by S. Hockaday)
In her Off Shore - 2 photograms she presents the eerie
fact that there are islands and colonies of plastic junk floating through the
oceans, via various currents, which, basically, mimic the movements and
patterns of marine life. The functions
of post-industrialized globalized capitalism work beautifully in some countries
to ensure universal nutrition, healthcare, leisure, comfort and even meaningful
activities, except for the one flaw in the system unique in humanity’s long history
– materials are being created that are more permanent than the most permanent
organic material (even more permanent than, say, bones) but these materials are
not absorbed back into nature in a healthful or even benign way. No one seems to have adequately determined
what to do with these materials and the more we try to hide or bury them the
more deeply they become embedded in our personal lives.
(Off Shore - 2 by S. Hockaday)
In Strange Weather she shows that even if we look at the
night sky and are affected with a sense of tranquility and awe, in reality the
lower reaches of space are littered with human-made objects and space junk. This
ties in with the overall theme of the show: concomitant with our global
economic development is an irreversible process that seems to be imitating,
destroying and replacing nature. Indeed,
the process is so insidious because it is often imperceptible on a personal
level.
The challenge, of course, in creating socially committed
art about an environmental issue, is to avoid being trite and predictable and
to present the dilemma in a novel, relevant and engaging manner. The work of Hockaday does this by making
these imperceptible processes more perceptible and more unacceptable. In some of her pieces you can identify the
individual objects that are floating in colonies throughout the ocean, and you
see combs, buttons, plastic spoons as part of pseudo-organic structures or
patterns. She clearly conveys the
palpable realization that many previous cultures left without a trace but we
are unique in that we are leaving imperishable by-products made up of the
littlest bits of useless trash while adversely altering ecosystems and
hastening global warming.
Soho20 began as a female-centered gallery in the early
70s, and has consistently presented socially aware and socially and
environmentally committed work. Hockaday’s current show is a good example of
the high quality of work this gallery has become known for.
