Wild and tamed
From Vaughn Sills’s show “Inside Outside,’’ at Kingston Gallery, Boston, Feb. 5-29. The gallery says “the group of photographs blend still life and landscape, “combining bouquets of flowers with landscapes that Sills creates of Prince Edward Island, her mother’s home. For the artist, the fundamental concept is expressed in the exhibition title, a juxtaposition of highly cultivated nature versus the untamed natural world. Domestic life is represented by garden-grown flowers in vases, alluding to the traditional notion of women’s work in gardens and in the home; while the outside world is seen in the images of sea and land.’’
Mortality and beauty are explored in a secondary layer of this body of work. The Prince Edward Island landscapes and seascapes are part of a series about grieving for Sills’ mother, a woman noted for her remarkable beauty. They represent expressions of sadness, love, memory, and connection. Flowers, with their ephemeral beauty, are reminders of death and contrast with the feeling of infinitude implied by the sea and rolling hills. A third layer speaks to the artist’s concern for the planet. She is attuned to the climate crisis implied in these photographs. Local streams and ponds are polluted by the farmer’s field featured in her work, and the flowers purchased for the photographs are transported via trucks that contribute to carbon emissions, a factor in the rise of sea levels. It is the ugly price of beauty, and a reminder of the impermanence of our world.
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Image credit: Vaughn Sills, Double Northumberland Strait Boom Tulips, archival pigment print, 21 x 14 inches, 2015, courtesy the artist.