Through a glass, darkly uses an aspect of western Sydney car culture, recycling car yards, to highlight environmental issues - we all know that car emissions are one of the major causes of climate change and that waste is a global issue.
Spaghetti junctions, highways and roads. They connect people and products. They cut new paths through cities, suburbs and the bush, bringing consumers and consumables together.
Through a glass, darkly uses an aspect of western Sydney car culture, recycling car yards, to highlight environmental issues - we all know that car emissions are one of the major causes of climate change and that waste is a global issue.
A Blacktown car recycling yard houses hundreds of smashed cars, row upon row. Their bonnets up, car-lovers stroll through the space to purchase spare engine parts. Of course the windscreens are one component that cannot be reused. As I cut them out from the cars the safety glass stayed intact and I realised the interesting patterns look like street networks seen from above.
Our interconnections depend so much on urban change and our ever-expanding road networks - Westconnex and M4 expansion. They define movement and life and products and people and gobble up land and livelihoods.
The cracked glass is a metaphor for these interconnections made by roads and their central place in globalisation and consumerism. Through the shattered glass we see the dark nature of rampant consumerism and the devastation of our environment that is required to sustain it. Both the smashed cars and our road networks share redundancy.
Edmund Burke described the sublime as anxiety in the face of nature—a raging flood, a hurricane - man is overcome with an ecstasy of terror. For historian Leo Marx the subjugation of our environment has generated a new ‘technological sublime.’ “The awe and reverence once reserved for the Deity and later bestowed upon the visible landscape is directed toward … the technological conquest of matter.”
As an x-ray points out the weakness or disease in a body, so these images expose our consumerism as being a shameful side of our lifestyle. The black and white references our impaired perception of what we are doing to our world: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”
This series continues my exploration of redundancy, waste and urban change. My interest is in objects, structures and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Beauty is found in these places and products of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence.
BIO
Emerging artist Emilio Cresciani graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2012.
He is a finalist in 2017 Bowness Photography Prize; received a 2017 PhotoAccess Canberra Artist Support Package; was a finalist in the 2015 Chippendale New World Art Prize and Agendo Art Prize; and 2010 National Youth Self Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
His artwork explores redundancy and urban change. His interest is in objects, structures, buildings and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Waste centres, derelict service stations, road works, car parks and abandoned factories. Beauty is found in these objects and places of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence.
Spaghetti junctions, highways and roads. They connect people and products. They cut new paths through cities, suburbs and the bush, bringing consumers and consumables together.
Through a glass, darkly uses an aspect of western Sydney car culture, recycling car yards, to highlight environmental issues - we all know that car emissions are one of the major causes of climate change and that waste is a global issue.
A Blacktown car recycling yard houses hundreds of smashed cars, row upon row. Their bonnets up, car-lovers stroll through the space to purchase spare engine parts. Of course the windscreens are one component that cannot be reused. As I cut them out from the cars the safety glass stayed intact and I realised the interesting patterns look like street networks seen from above.
Our interconnections depend so much on urban change and our ever-expanding road networks - Westconnex and M4 expansion. They define movement and life and products and people and gobble up land and livelihoods.
The cracked glass is a metaphor for these interconnections made by roads and their central place in globalisation and consumerism. Through the shattered glass we see the dark nature of rampant consumerism and the devastation of our environment that is required to sustain it. Both the smashed cars and our road networks share redundancy.
Edmund Burke described the sublime as anxiety in the face of nature—a raging flood, a hurricane - man is overcome with an ecstasy of terror. For historian Leo Marx the subjugation of our environment has generated a new ‘technological sublime.’ “The awe and reverence once reserved for the Deity and later bestowed upon the visible landscape is directed toward … the technological conquest of matter.”
As an x-ray points out the weakness or disease in a body, so these images expose our consumerism as being a shameful side of our lifestyle. The black and white references our impaired perception of what we are doing to our world: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.”
This series continues my exploration of redundancy, waste and urban change. My interest is in objects, structures and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Beauty is found in these places and products of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence.
BIO
Emerging artist Emilio Cresciani graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2012.
He is a finalist in 2017 Bowness Photography Prize; received a 2017 PhotoAccess Canberra Artist Support Package; was a finalist in the 2015 Chippendale New World Art Prize and Agendo Art Prize; and 2010 National Youth Self Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.
His artwork explores redundancy and urban change. His interest is in objects, structures, buildings and the urban landscape, and in particular the increasing number of ‘non-places’ that fill our environment. Waste centres, derelict service stations, road works, car parks and abandoned factories. Beauty is found in these objects and places of repulsion, neglect or obsolescence.
