Civilisation Blooming | Deirdre Frost & Seiko Hayase

Cork-based artists Deirdre Frost and Seiko Hayase collaborate in producing a cross-cultural exhibition Civilisation Blooming / 文明開花 , a project that will see the two artists venture into new media and establish a synergistic practice.

文明開花  means 'civilisation' in Japanese and is written using characters that mean 'blooming culture'. 'Bloom' can be considered a positive, when something has flowered, is in its prime or at its peak. However, an algal bloom for example can be considered a negative event, a sign of ecological imbalance.? Looking at the idea of peak humanity in this Anthropocene age, with the potential collapse of multiple organisational systems looming globally, the artists consider the idea of civilisation blooming.

Hayase looks at this through the lens of addictive behaviours, and considers how much of our world functions by exploiting human addictive tendencies. This is evident in social media, advertising, the types of food, drink and other substances and lifestyles that are marketed to us. Through sculpture, the artist has produced a large-scale work consisting of constant slow drips of water from sculptured brains, with this liquid interacting with salt and blooming as crystals.

Frost’s new body of work includes ceramic sculptural vessels developed and made at Louis Mulcahy Pottery on the Dingle Peninsula. These pots are reminiscent of vessels of past civilisations that held contents that were valued. These pots have been opened up and painted in oil paint on their insides. By depicting a range of scenes of flora based on themes of play, nourishment and research/work on the interior of these pots Frost signifies the value of this flora. The misshapen, tilting and functionless form of these vessels highlight our current civilisation’s fragility in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss. The buildings in Frost’s new 2D paintings draw on a palette of nudes - soft pinks, tans and browns to point to the human inhabitants of these manmade spaces. The crisis facing humanity is shown through this skin colouring found amid the collapsing buildings and beautiful wild plants that burst forth.

A key part of this collaborative project is a stop motion animation piece, Civilisation (3:53), that further develops the narrative element in the artist's 2D and 3D works through collaborative storyboard development. Set in a world reminiscent of Frost’s paintings, Hayase’s brain character navigates a collapsing world that draws on Hayase’s use of horror and humour as characteristic agents of her work, along with Frost’s evocative scenes of beauty and collapse in the human environment.