Emotional Connections to Nature

Clara Hastrup Sculpture & Environmental Art

Runner-up, GSA’s Sustainability in Action Group Degree Show Prize 2016

Biography
Clara Hastrup was born in Aarhus, Denmark, 1990. She works in a variety of media including photography, video and sculpture and her work is often a very deliberate reflection on the nature and content of images. She has been living and working in Glasgow for the past three years and is now finishing her BA (hons) in Fine Art (Painting and Printmaking) at The Glasgow School of Art.

Excerpts from Summary
I want to lead the viewer on a subtle, yet very visual trip, where meaning becomes second to seeing and enjoying what is seen and where the viewer becomes complicit in the manipulation. The playful approach calls to mind an unstable world in flux where humans dominate the playground and due to that are facing the effects of environmental degradation, consumerism and waste.

To me, this installation is a personal research or escape into the nature of images themselves – those ‘universal’ images that trigger emotions, obsessions, and desires in us but also a sort of meta-commentary that uses images of nature to describe the nature of images – and vice-versa.

Utilizing the language of the everyday visual bombardment that so easily alienates us from pressing issues like climate change is an attempt at questioning our way of managing and making sense of the world through this information acceleration. I don’t think we can emphasize with the natural world by merely experiencing it as scenery, as an image. It requires knowing a place, deeply and I believe there is a need to reconcile natural and artificial, the rational with the spiritual. There is a need for the human to reconnect with the natural environment and I want my work to offer new connections by challenging our perception.