Dark Nature, 2010

Dark Nature

Mats Adelman - Roger Andersson - Justin Bartlett - Paul Housley

"Mats Adelman’s drawings, watercolours, sculptures and films explore the area where the urban and natural world collide and suggest an intimate relationship with nature that hints at desperation. He asks the question – are we imposing on nature or is nature colonising us? Referencing folk sculpture and a backwards D.I.Y aesthetic we are presented with disquieting wooden sculptures of birds that feel too menacing to approach and bird houses as wrecks constructed with splintered wood. There are hybrid sculptures of leaves, flowers and wings, twee at first glance, menacing on closer inspection; and watercolours of decrepit desolate cabins where a loner seems to live, suggesting a state of mind as much as a place."