Nicholas Miller

FINALIST

‘Warped Fragments of an Ethereal Nature’

“There is pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more.”

- Lord Byron

Natural spaces are finite, and our experiences within these spaces are becoming more constructed and curated as time evolves. This tapestry explores the juxtaposition between natural and architectural sites in the modern context.

The tapestry, seemingly incomplete, is exhibited in front of a mirror of a similar scale. The ‘completed’ top third of the tapestry depicts, through both warp and weft, Cradle Mountain, a significant and awe-inspiring site in Tasmania. As it draws closer to the bottom of the composition, and the gallery floor, the clear image depicted at the top of the tapestry starts to dissipate, leaving the warp exposed. The weft becomes non-existent, exposing the reflective surface beyond, and thus the viewer and the significant architectural site, start to merge with the soft sky of the tapestry. The merging of natural and architectural space is significant, the untamed landscape is a stark contrast to the museum site, a place traditionally heralded as a place of elevated social significance.

The hard surfaces of the exhibition space reverberate and chatter as furniture moves and plates are served. The natural environment depicted in the tapestry is silent, soft and still. As the viewer approaches, they consider the fibre of the tapestry, and of the natural environment, the warp leading their eye upward to the sublime scene above. The mountains however, are an inverted, and the viewers’ perspective is warped. The positive space suspended above defies plausibility, and the fragmented void that is the sky below fractures and fades into a mesmerising blur of fibre and architecture, altered and incoherent.