Fictional Flora
Five Walls Gallery
04.10.24 - 26.10.24

This exhibition ‘Fictional Flora’ presents a new body of work in which Ariella Friend further explores her relationship to nature in a digital world. Researching the natural landscape of Footscray surrounding the gallery through online text based prompts and image searches, plants such as the Silky Oak Tree and Blue Devil have inspired and informed a series of wall based and freestanding expanded paintings.

“Zooming in and out of digital imagery I reduce the landscape into a series of pixels and colour blocks that are then interpreted into abstract, sculptural works”.

By combining layers of found, imperfect timber that have been cut and sanded to size by the art- ist, with a nature inspired colour palette this new body of work further explores Friend’s interest in materiality and the process of making.

Just like the Italian Arte Povera Movement from the late 1960s to 1970s whose artists explored a range of unconventional processes and combined them with every day materials,‘ ‘Fictional Flora’ reflects Friend’s playful and experimental approach to non objective art making while challenging the viewers’ perception of what a landscape painting could be.

Photos by Jessica Maurer and Peter Brook.