Sensitive and precise, Julia McKinlay's show at Here Gallery was a strong and striking combination of drawing and installation. Hostile Places was an exhibition of her visual research and reflections on a trip to Yellow Stone Park, and the Grand Canyon.
Drawings
and photographs from museums and research expeditions form the starting point
for my work. My work explores the subjects of the animal, geology, landscape in
the form of sculpture and drawings. I spent last July travelling through
America hiking in the National parks and taking photographs of the extreme
environments that I visited from deserts and canyons to mountains and glaciers.
I was particularly interested in the geysers, fumaroles and bubbling mud pots
at Yellowstone National Park, the wildlife that has adapted to live there and
the structures that have formed as a result of the build up of minerals. I was
fascinated by the bacteria blankets; colonies of bacteria that live in a flat,
layered carpet like structure in the pools around geysers, which have
incredibly intense colours.
The
body of work that I have developed for this exhibition is in response to the
harshness of the environment in Yellowstone, which has a unique situation on a
volcanic caldera within a mountain range. Yellowstone’s altitude, the thinness
of the earths crust in that area, and the channel of moisture sweeping in to
the mountains from the Pacific Ocean have made it one of the most difficult
places in the world for wildlife to survive. My work usually takes the form of
large-scale sculptural installations, however because my focus has been details
such as the colours and textures of the bacterial pools, the work is mainly in
the form of drawings. I create objects that seek to combine the man-made with
the organic. Gloss paint, enamel, and plastics are combined with wood, and
natural fibres create a tension between the industrial and the natural.
