Meditation on Botanical Forms – Topiaries Series by Nicolette Johnson
There’s definitely a spiritual experience when affiliating with other forms of life. It doesn’t have to be a specific type of animal, it can even be nature itself. This connection is particularly hard to describe through words alone so artists have been doing a good job of exploring this phenomenon since Indigenous people drew on rock.
Brisbane-based artist Nicolette Johnson intrigued me with her series titled ‘Topiaries’ that’s a meditation on botanical forms, symmetry in nature, and the tension between organic and man-made. She really excelled herself here, first producing these vase shapes on the pottery wheel before attaching hundreds of protrusions to the surface of them. These oval-shaped petals radiate from the centre and can also be linked to other patterns found in nature: a fruit, a stamen, or even the downy plumage of a bird.
Despite being so young Nicolette has already achieved so much, her work being included in the permanent collections of The National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Brisbane. She has a great eye for fabricating forms that are modern in aesthetic but have strong links to forms from ancient times. I can’t wait to see what else she produces in the future and the overall direction of her work. More information about Nicolette can be found on her portfolio linked below.
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