Fractured

FRACTURED

Douglas John Parsons is a multidisciplinary artist working predominantly through the mediums of sculpture and installation art.

The dual concepts of ‘Nature’ and ‘Man’ are foundational to his work.

‘FRACTURED’ is intended as a visual study of the harmony and opposition found in an attempt to define the character of their relationship to one another. Each is treated with an exploratory gaze and the re-imagining of pre-existing material.

The exhibition is an experimental union of competing forces: exposure and armour, interaction and disconnection, manipulation and immovability.

The dichotomy between ‘Nature’ and ‘Man’ is expressed through allusive references to anthropogenic environmental change.

Man is presented as increasingly encroaching and ultimately commanding impressions on the natural landscape. Static elements are endowed with a sense of movement and flow, signifying the transfer of energy, suspense, power and time.

Raw and unadulterated material- grain and stone, are collected in a process reflective of Man’s behavioural proclivity to gather and hoard. There is a peripheral feeling that the viewer is being directed to take note of the current geopolitical condition: subtle notes on war, resource scarcity, Man’s vulnerability and security linger throughout.

Yet, a tone of optimism persists too. Despite Man’s propensity for destruction, Nature perseveres and pushes back. A message of co-dependency and resilience, of common good and harmony is perceptible in the binding of disparate materials.

The material itself is sourced from places of personal significance that relate directly to the artist’s memories and heritage. Stone is gathered from the Scottish Highlands, where his mother was raised and grain is collected from Norfolk, symbolising his father and ancestral farming tradition.

The series challenges our preconceptions of that which is ‘fractured’; the pieces are more valuable for their visible history and more intriguing for having been partially transformed.