Safe Operating Space

In Safe Operating Space I will build on my art practice and present new works of the figure in the landscape, which move towards addressing human pressures on the environment and the increasing urgency to define a sustainable relationship with the world around us, our life support system. The definition of edge - the space between the figure and the landscape – is important in my work. I break down this relationship to comment on how we fleetingly inhabit the natural world, depicting this subtle, sensitive and fragile boundary. My works explore our experience of space via light and movement. I am interested in exploring how I can amalgamate images which communicate the photographic and the painterly simultaneously. I draw my inspiration for this show from a body of research done by Prof. Will Steffen (ANU) on Planetary Boundaries published in Science in 2015. Steffen and his co authors have created a Planetary Boundaries Framework which identifies a safe operating space for humanity on earth. These boundaries are ‘scientifically based levels of human perturbation of the Earth System beyond which its functioning may be substantially altered and destabilized’ (W. Steffen et al., Science vol 347 issue 6223 (2015). Steffen et al. identify 9 planetary boundaries, which highlight areas of increasing risk, including climate change. I will investigate these edges or zones of uncertainty in this exhibition.