Gutter Pop

This research project revolves around wax, an inherently mercurial and unstable medium, porous to contaminants, sensitive to temperature, and preservative by nature. In a series of artworks and a minor dissertation, I engage with wax as both material and metaphor; an analogy with which to explore the relationship between human and natural environments and the themes of temporality and disintegration within the context of the present climate crisis. Bees, the producers of natural wax, are attracted to my work and constitute an integral part of the project. Gradually removing wax from the studio to their hive, they have become co-producers. The resulting collaborative works gesture to a post-natural state where the unknown biodegradable effects of human production and waste — continuously synthesised materials and contagions that co-evolve with organic processes — create a hybrid ecosystem. In articulating my practice and its thematic resonances, I am guided by posthumanist theorists Timothy Morton, Jane Bennett, Karen Barad, and Elizabeth Grosz. My engagement with wax explores a mediated materiality shaped by haptic, synthetic, and digital interventions. These interventions extend reflections on the tentative co-existence of the human and non-human world, and question the capacity for protection and preservation. My work envisions precarious futuristic environments by creating tensions between process, form, material, and colour, and collapsing previously held boundaries of pictorial space and interdisciplinarity. In a presentation of my methodologies, I discuss how my chance collaboration with bees has further informed my understanding of posthumanist thinking and expanded the field of my painting practice.

Grantor

Michaelis School of Fine Art

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Vossgätter, Elize

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Langerman, Fritha

• Fine Art

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/40673

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/40673