The Falling Collection
brolga boy, falling
My studio work has used the fall as a metaphor for vulnerability. Fall or falling have meanings beyond the physical act of falling over; this work searches the tensions within those emotional and societal falls leading to vulnerability.
For instance falls, both physical and metaphorical, provoke excitement or anxiety. A fall may lead us to injury, to flight, or to anti-climax, they heighten our vulnerability and propel us to a space where we struggle for safety.
That vulnerability leads us to greater understanding and insight, and thus those falling live in a state of paradox; a conflicted tumble into a void of chaos where the fragmentary memories of the subconscious may be pulled to the surface and expressed, where emotions are heightened, and the world is reinterpreted.
We spend our lives falling through the present and we are vulnerable, more than we realise, because of the connections we have with our past, and our search for a place in the present.
Yet vulnerability may not be a weakness.
Vulnerability fosters the empathy that makes relationships stronger and triggers creativity born from a need to end uncertainty. The work within the collection is not about falling over or falling down. Rather, it addresses those other falls, of falling into despair or illness, of falling from grace or favour, and while it is not about redemption, neither does it exclude it.
The work is pared back to charcoal on paper, figures in a void, yet all searching for their own dignity.
We may fall, yet sometimes we are blessed to fly. Please enjoy the second video.
©malcolmrichardsart2016
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