Art Almanac revisits some of last year’s entries for ‘Looking Ahead’; responses by arts workers that showed the uncertainty, vulnerability, and angst felt during such unprecedented times. 2020 changed us all, hopefully for the better. Artist Megan Seres expresses her thoughts on how 2020 has reframed her creative focus and how she has moved forward into 2021.
The disjunction between desire, hope and the harsh realities of ecological perils, social histories, women’s inequities and COVID-19 isolation powerfully altered the way I perceived the world. What once was vast had paradoxically become claustrophobic.
‘Catarina Kinnvall and Helle Rydstrom examine the gendered politics of disaster and climate change. They argue that gender hierarchies, patriarchal structures and masculinity are closely related to the denial of environmental crises and the female vulnerability to climate-aggravated disasters.’ – Carrie N. Baker, J.D., PhD
I’m interested in the wildness of the wilderness and how there is a deep longing, but also an historical fear, about man’s need to destroy what cannot be tamed. It scares me to think that this often underscores the feminine experience. Mother Nature is stronger than us, yet we continue to push her and ourselves to the brink.
Megan Seres, Incendio Silvarum (The Fire Forest) and Ultimum Silvam (The Last Forest), single channel HD video still. Courtesy the artist
American environmentalist Bill McKibben warns that extreme weather is shrinking the planet, as wildfires, heatwaves and rising sea levels are making large areas of the earth uninhabitable, forcing people to migrate and causing instability, increased poverty, sexual exploitation and abuse.
I wanted to create a body of work that stems from this trauma, to push it out to a broader context into a state of healing. Predominantly a painter, the claustrophobia and fears of the past two years forced me to push against a world closing in. By traversing video, ceramics, painting and poetry, my world became more expansive.
In 2017, I had the opportunity to film a group of females within the landscape, and it wasn’t until 2020 that I began to visualise how these videos could unfold. Time slows, deep reds and oranges blur the focus of women running through the landscape, each step in sync with the music, like a heartbeat, or sonorous sounds of impending doom. A flash of light turns to blue hues, with the appearance of females emerging from behind trees, their presence finally seen; their pace is slow, ethereal, they move towards us, floating on the waves of a haunted voice. They stand before us, triumphant.
This body of work was conceived to provoke a visceral, emotional response, to create an awareness of the impacts of this time. It asks the viewer to embrace this inherent connection. It conveys both rage and grief, beauty and devastation, sorrow and joy, what is hidden and in plain sight, a necessity to inspire viewers to preserve and protect.
The paintings from this period are full of colour and light, from figuration through to abstraction and are a complete departure from my previous work. There is an expectation that artists should develop in a rather linear, orderly, logical way. But what happens when the life around you is chaotic, unpredictable, and changeable? How does one look ahead? Perhaps it is because art can be a beacon of hope, lighting the way and compelling us to act in response to these upheavals, and giving artists the opportunity to excavate these notions.
Megan Seres is a multi-award-winning, multi-media practitioner.
