art making & exhibiting 2023

alice de luca

Inspired by mythology and current environmental issues, aspiring digital artist Alice De Luca has created a short GIF (looping inaudible moving image) to convey the need to protect the environment before it’s too late, exploring themes of nature and fantasy (similar to their diptych earlier this year titled Utopia and Dystopia). This work depicts 2 environments to depict 2 possibilities for it: The first setting deliberately uses bright, natural, organic, and layered shapes and textures to create a playful, fun aesthetic to present the possibility of a healthy environment as appealing and comforting to the audience. The second setting contrasts this by using darker colours and more jagged shapes and lines to create a threatening, abandoned aesthetic to highlight the dystopia the environment is headed towards. The use of the Greek nature goddess Gaia is used to convey the nature and fantasy themes in a more recognisable way. The GIF extends the common depiction of Gaia as a ‘giver of nature’ by presenting the 1st setting through the text as a kindhearted gift for humanity, positioning the audience to feel responsible and grateful for it. This relationship gets manipulated by having Gaia be shocked and angry at the potential dystopia, her hair flying up to indicate her wrath and enhance the intimidating aesthetic (working as an allegory for the future to make audiences confront potential environmental consequences and prevent them). The sun transition literally and metaphorically transitions between the 2 settings: the sun increasing in size, darkening in colour and using scribbly lines to indicate global warming’s destructive potential. The sharp shapes used to reveal the second setting also foreshadow the sharp lines and shapes in the second setting.