Natural Abstractions

Featuring Noj Barker, Miranda Donovan, Jemima Murphy, Rajan Seth and Sky Sharrock, ’Natural Abstractions’ explores the relationship between abstract art and natural phenomena. Each artist is inspired by nature, be it in the form of skies, sea, clouds, flowers or foliage.

The Natural Abstraction Hypothesis, proposed by John Wentworth states that “there exist abstractions (relatively low-dimensional summaries which capture information relevant for prediction) which are ‘natural’ in the sense that we should expect a wide variety of cognitive systems to converge on using them.”

Abstraction is defined as freedom from representational qualities in art, and the featured artists all use forms, gestural marks, shapes and colour palettes designed to create an abstracted version of reality. Water and liquid forms, weather and atmospheric patterns, lines of structure and growth, the luminosity of fauna and flora, and the palette of the earth provide a cornucopia of source material for artists to abstract. Abstract art is often perceived to have a moral dimension, with elements of spirituality, purity and simplicity.