Kathleen Hawkes — Anthropocene

The Theory of Everything, 40x60 inches, inkjet print

ANTHROPOCENE STATEMENT

Anthropocene refers to the current era in which humankind is actively altering the global ecosystem. Thinking of our planet’s precarious environmental future is overwhelming and hard to reconcile. This exhibition attempts to capture what this anxious, uncertain and disabling moment feels like.

To create the photographic works I combine layers of photographed candy, cheap trinkets, bits of plastic, and other mass-produced, disposable consumer goods. I see these objects as stand-ins for the elemental building blocks of matter. And, I wonder how our elemental understanding of the earth will shift in the future. I compose the images to exaggerate a tipping point between presence and absence. I want to access a fleeting moment of confusion between positive and negative space, macro and micro scale, flatness and depth, and chaos and order. The photographs are printed large scale to highlight subtle imperfections and residue of the objects, and to make the viewer’s experience more immersive and immediate.

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The Theory of Everything (detail)

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Ultraviolet, 24x24 inches, inkjet print

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Atoll, 36x36 inches, inkjet print

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Shade Reservoir, 40x60 inches, inkjet print

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Shade Reservoir (detail)

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Battleship, 24x24 inches, inkjet print