Margie Hooper – Transformations

Transformations is a body of work originally made for a 2014 SALA exhibition, SEACHANGE. The work is about transforming ideas of evolution and climate change.

I live by the sea and see the damage being done by humans. The rubbish washed up along the littoral zone has increased in the time that I have been walking the beach. And as I ponder where we came from and where as a species we might be heading, I wonder if our time on this beautiful planet may be finite through our own stupidity.

‘Liberty?’ is taken from Delecroix’s work, Liberty leading the people, a painting that shows death and destruction of the French Revolution. Ten years ago I was asked to make a copy of this painting for the Botanic Hotel in Adelaide and as I knew every inch of the painting I decided it was a good example to transform into a seachange piece. I made several charcoal drawings and then the diptych painting above.

The painting of Petrel Cove below grew out of several observational drawings and painted sketches from the lookout at the back of The Bluff at Victor Harbor.

After reading about Gaia, the notion that the planet is a single organism, I began to imagine what the concept of a Mother Earth might look like, and if, like humans, there were generations of Mothers. I began to see human forms everywhere I looked!

‘The Missing Link’ painting is just fun. If we began as salamander-type beings, my favourite being the icthyosaurs, then I wonder what we may evolve into in the future. And perhaps there is still a little bit of fish left in all of us!