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Small orbs made from industrial detritus, such as cement, coal ash and marble waste dot the concrete floor in Jamie North’s exhibition Remainder at Sarah Cottier Gallery. Their fractured and pock-marked surfaces are breached by tiny native Australian plants, which have made these orbs their unlikely home. Scattered across the gallery floor they resemble asteroids that have landed haphazardly, giving the exhibition a science fiction-like quality. The globe shaped sculptures, which are also titled Remainder, highlight the ability of plants to reclaim or even re-colonise an environment after human intervention. The colonisation of nature, which expanded with industrialisation, alongside Enlightenment ideas of dualism between human and non-human worlds, is reversed in these works. Native plants become active agents able to survive in precarious circumstances, rather than passive objects to be used and exploited. The work addresses ecological concerns, which are timely considering the looming threat of environmental crises. The emergence of plant life on these dismal and otherwise barren surfaces inevitably suggests the aftermath of some human-caused catastrophe, such as global warming, making them appear to be relics from the future rather than the past. The use of materials such as coal ash points to the unsustainable and still expanding capitalist economy of fossil fuel exploitation.
At the back of the gallery stands a crumbling column, Drifting to Void (2016), which utilises bricks also cast from mottled cement and industrial by-products, bringing to the fore the romantic orientation of North’s work. The column recalls the follies or faux ruins that decorated 18th century gardens and were overrun by nature. Its hollowed interior is planted with native flora, adaptable to harsh and rocky environments, suggesting a precarious balance between resilience