GEORGIA RHODES // Flora non Fauna
When we’re frightened, the instinct to flatten comes through in remarkable ways: swatting the fly, whacking the spider with a shoe. Growth in consideration of landscape is a confusing notion, the need to keep it aligned while also preserving its foothold in our world. There is an obsession with curating the chaos, delicately organizing what we find tenuous, striking a balance with what scares us. We fight to find some measure of success at keeping the wild out yet we still crave it in our lives. It's in the tablecloth with the strawberry vines, a patterned dress with yellow flowers, an increased saturation, a carpet mimicking what we constantly mow down, four little bugs all lined up in a row.
Flora non Fauna is an introspective and interpersonal look at home, a careful catalogue of the ways a person obsesses over controlling what lies outside. The images work as a reference from one point to another, seemingly disparate ideas connected by a flatness, an intervention caused by the struggle to keep out. It's about expectations and where those expectations collide in the idea of control, the cutting of the branches to the panels of the wall, when we let the outside come in but only if it promises to follow all the rules.
www.georgiarhodes.com