Artist Statement – Periculum

This collage series is entitled Periculum, which in Latin means: trial; proof; danger; peril; risk; liability. I have downloaded images from the Internet database of Canadian native plant species considered the most “at risk” according to federal, provincial, and territorial governments. My “field work” has been conducted in the virtual realm of the Internet – a domain where “virtuality destroys reality”. I then printed the botanical images onto high-quality ink-jet paper and carefully cut away each plant from their original context to reconfigure them into a new modified plant form. An individual collage has been generated for each of the thirteen Canadian provinces and territories. A fourteenth collage has been developed to represent all of Canada and contains a plant species that is at risk from each of the provinces and territories. The development of the Periculum series was supported by a “Visual Arts and New Media Project Grant” from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

As humans we are constantly driven to develop technologies and organizational systems that attempt to counteract the negative effects we have already inflicted upon the natural world. With my proposition to “genetically collage” all of the provincial and territorial plant “species at risk” together into one specimen we would only have to concern ourselves with protecting one plant species rather than a diverse range of them – a system of efficiency. These botanical collage images act as another futile and preposterous proposal to help restore and protect what we are on the verge of destroying.

Photography: Gavin Semple