CONSTRUCT

Backwoods.Gallery
Melbourne, VIC Australia
September 2020

EXHIBITION ESSAY by Tom Groves

The correlation between humankind’s expansion of our built environment and the degradation of our natural one is the starting point for Bradley Eastman’s inspiration for Construct. 

Eastman relocated from Sydney to Bali five years ago. Since arriving, Eastman has witnessed the rapid expansion of urban development in Indonesia which has caused visually confronting changes to the natural landscape. Blinded by a push to modernise, local idiosyncrasy is being replaced by overwhelming architectural structures and sprawling urban development. As a consequence, altering, destroying and repurposing our natural environment in the name of ‘progress’ and capitalist gain has become common place, leaving behind a trail of permanent alteration and destruction of nature’s landscapes. 

This change in our urban environments, and human efforts to re-create nature within them, has always informed Eastman’s works. In particular, the way our natural environment is framed, removed, altered and repurposed to suit the design and construction of modern human spaces. Eastman’s works aim to examine the intentions behind this repurposing of our natural landscapes and the way we as humans interact with and move through the built environments we replace them with.

Construct examines this change in smaller local precincts from an aerial perspective. Eastman has re-created scenes of completely man made developments where ‘natural’ landscapes are manipulated by man-made designs and ideas. These paintings represent a visual language of the flowing pathways, levels, stairs, roads, canals and different ways we construct cues to aid navigation through these modern built environments. The chosen colour palette and materials, locally sourced timber and rattan matts, are Eastman’s way of connecting the artworks with their place of creation and also a nod to, and reminder of, the visual aspects of the ‘nature’ that presided over these environments for aeons before human intervention. 

The paintings themselves are reflective of these observations, created through a labour intensive ‘construction’ process with both natural and man-made materials. The works begin with precise mathematics and geometry to create the foundation of controlled line work that birth the artwork composition. Following is a careful masking process with tape and scalpel, and colour matching and pigment alteration to mimic Eastman’s chosen colour palette which draws direct inspiration from nature. 

Eastman’s new collection reminds us to engage more with our natural environment, whether urban or not, and consider how we are interacting with and altering nature’s natural course. 

https://www.backwoods.gallery/exhibition/constructbybradeastman

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