Mark Adair’s Last Garden
September 25, 2008
Addressing the theme of death and the environment, Adair brings together large charcoal drawings, a series of miniature drawings and a new sculpture. Traditionally a sculpturist, charcoal were for a long time simply studies for Adair. But he’s now finding their black and white sensibility and immediacy helps compliment his “abstruse” sculptures.
Not that his latest sculpture, *21st century Reliquary* is all that abstruse. A modern adaptation of religious reliquaries from the Middle Ages, Adair has replaced the remains of a saint with the environment. On the top of his reliquary is an elaborate carving of a tree and in the centre of the piece there’s kind of a copper ball representing the earth.
“These are very very endangered things. So for me they’re sacred. So I wanted to make a piece in the middle age form using that as a theme.”
Adair first became interested in the Middle Ages investigating its attitude towards the natural world as being something sacred. He believes it’s an attitude we’d be wise to reconsider.
“There’s a growing awareness about it. We’re going to be extinct if we don’t hop to it. But I don’t think that we’ve really changed our ways It’s still drill baby drill.”
Last Garden will be on display from Sat September 27 – Sun October 19 at Toronto’s Loop Gallery.
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