By JESSE GRAHAM
WHAT makes us find things beautiful, valuable or worth keeping?
Is value in beauty or symmetry, or does something else cause things to become valuable?
These are the questions Healesville artist Ali Griffin wants to put to those who view her latest exhibition, the conversation she wants to start.
In her latest exhibition, Still, Ms Griffin uses different mediums to explore the concept of beauty, particularly the idea of what makes some things more valuable than others.
“Using the materials of mirrors, copper, tapestries and real things; cocoons which may or may not be alive, birds which are deceased, feathers and things that are real, but ones that are made, as well, out of resin – to show the juxtaposition of the real versus the man-made,” Ms Griffin said.
“What do we value more and why do we value them more, and should we value them more?
“Trying to ask that question and to say to people: what needs to happen in our world so we value what we’ve got, so we don’t destroy it?”
Ms Griffin said the themes also reflected the current discussions about how to protect the critically-endangered Leadbeater’s Possum in the Toolangi and Yellingbo areas.
“I’ve done little drawings of a Leadbeater’s Possum skull sitting on a mirror, showing that there’s more than one side to the argument, but also that reflecting of the beauty,” she said, noting the popular belief that people with symmetrical faces were often seen as more beautiful.
“Skulls aren’t always seen as beautiful and death isn’t always seen as beautiful, but it depends on how you look at it – the reflective of death is life,” she said.
Still will be Ms Griffin’s first solo exhibition, and she said it hoped to start conversations, open people’s minds and to make a difference in the way they thought.
“I think it absolutely depends on the artist as to why they exhibit – for me, it’s basically to change the world, one little exhibition at a time,” she said.
“Because I feel that art touches people on a level they don’t understand.
“If we embrace it, it can change the world.”
Still opens on Friday, 3 July, at 6pm at Healesville’s Memo Hall, 235 Maroondah Highway, Healesville.
For more information, visit www.culturetracks.info.
