What value do plants and green space provide in our everyday lives? What may the future of green space in Brisbane look like?
February 2019 heralds the inaugural exhibition for Onespace Gallery by impressive Gold Coast artist Nicola Moss. Moss brings her longstanding City and Nature project to the gallery, examining a changing ecology – a place where town planning, heritage and personal aesthetic, mixes with maintenance regimes and sense of well-being. On this occasion the project has resulted in Greenspace, an exploration of the inner-city Brisbane gardens of postcode 4101 – South Brisbane, West End and Highgate Hill.
Her work shares in local discussion, melding stories of the varied roles of greenery in our inner-urban areas. Moss’ art process utilizes questionnaires to glean information from garden owners which helps her explore the value of a healthy environment to communities and individuals, with a particular focus on the sense of well-being contact with plants can provide in our everyday lives.
Commencing her full-time practice in 2006, Moss has exhibited work regularly in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, regional areas of Australia and overseas in Japan, the US and Sweden. Her paper-based collage artworks resonate with ideas around themes of identity, lifestyle and sustainability. She utilises processes of en-plein air painting, expanded drawing, conversation and site visits.
The result of Moss’s ongoing investigation is a delight: compositions of organic forms made from cutting and layering paper and working with a variety of media – charcoal, watercolour, oil crayon, ink and ochre. Through her observations, Moss finds that paper has the ‘ability to record nuances of experience and place’, as she explores that innate human desire to connect with nature.
Ultimately her investigation asks: What value do plants and green space provide in our everyday lives? What may the future of green space in Brisbane look like?
Exhibition Dates: 2 February – 2 March 2019
Opening Event: Saturday 2 February 2019, 5-7pm
ONExchange In Conversation with Diana Warnes:
Saturday 2 February 2019, 4:15 – 5pm
Nicola Moss, West Green, 2018, Synthetic polymer, painted papers, washi, relief and collagraph prints, oil pastel, charcoal and gesso on stretched canvas, 90 x 90cm. Courtesy of the artist and Onespace Gallery.
