Published: 15 April 2021
Last updated: 5 March 2024
LAUREN BERKOWITZ’S INSTALLATIONS in the group exhibition titled The National 2021 are an act of environmental regeneration, steeped in the imagery of the 13th century mystical Jewish texts known as the Kabbalah.
The two sets of plastic artworks strike the viewer with their ability to create beauty out of waste, and references to the environmental blight caused by mass consumption.
In Plastic Topographies (main photo), the artist “conjoins lids, rings and takeaway containers into pillars above a sprawling ground cover of plastics”, according to the artist’s notes on the MCA website.
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Fragile Ecologies comprises three suspended constellations, five-metres high, of plastic lids and rings delicately bound together with nylon thread, according to the artist’s notes on the MCA website.
Both installations are the culmination of residencies she undertook in New York in 2018-19, at the International Studio and Curatorial Program and Residency Unlimited.
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Berkowitz’s art, over the past three decades, has revolved around “acts of salvaging, recycling and rehabilitating found materials.”
“They draw from her personal interest in the Jewish philosophy of Tikkun Olam: humanity’s responsibility to repair the world through good deeds and small gestures.
Berkowitz says she has acted as a caretaker, tidying littered sites. “Both artworks represent a culmination of the repetitive consumption of consumer products …
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“Over a two-year period, family, friends and staff at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia retrieved plastic from their homes while community networks gleaned waste from degraded landscapes, waterways and beaches, contributing to the artwork.
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“These activities worked to restore balance to ecosystems, highlighting our individual and collective obligation to heal our damaged world.”
Photo: Plastic Topographies
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