Taryn M. McMahon
Third Nature
August - September 2017
McMahon uses images of plants and architecture from botanical gardens to investigate sites and histories, highlighting the complicated cultural construction of an idea of “nature.” This work imagines a future ecology in which the natural and artificial become intertwined and conflated in the face of unprecedented change. Third Nature, is a term coined by hacker theorist McKenzie Wark, refers to the current state of the Anthropocene.
McMahon uses images developed from digital photographs and drawings made at botanical gardens and other ecological sites to interrogate ways that these spaces project our own desires and fantasies of the natural world and our place within it. The artist blends digital and hand-drawn print processes to further explore how our interactions with the natural world are mediated through technology, and are thus fragmented and selective.
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