Erin Amor- Nightlands

Nightlands
A series of paintings in oil and mixed media, gathering together aspects of the Tasmanian environment that explores the closure of the Holocene epoch in Tasmania’s natural history.
Nightlands describes Tasmanian landscape obscured by darkness, past and current ecologies, life beneath the earth, and unseen energy in the biosphere. It’s about falling darkness as a metaphor to describe our last century of enduring verdure, untouched wilderness; the calm before the throes of ecological breakdown. Scientists have openly agreed that we have reached the end of the Holocene, a geological epoch describing a prolonged climatological calm and habitability, and the commencement of the Anthropocene – a new epoch where human expansion and development have disrupted the delicate climatological balance on which so much life relies.
The works gather together recognisable aspects of Tasmanian’s ancient landscape: dolerite mountains and rocks, colour and weather, combined with layered oil glazes, line, and pattern to represent geological layers, currents, and fossilised life – precious relics from the 12000 year-long Holocene, and back to Gondwana. The clay and pigments have been sourced locally, from within the environments the images represent, physically connecting it to the works themselves.
These paintings are both a reflection of Tasmania’s natural life and landscape, and the threshold of change on which the planet now lies. Whilst this is not literally evident in the work, the silent eventuality which lies in consciousness and already in parts of the Tasmanian landscape is gently suggested, through stormy skies and a volatile atmosphere. The fluidity and sense of movement in these works, both in atmosphere and the abstraction of unseen currents, represent the constant humming of the earth and climatic entropy; unseen vibrations, geological and climatic movements towards irrevocable change – if our species maintains the path it now follows.