Nature and Form | Greta Costello

Greta Costello uses the photographic image to explore human interaction with the natural and urban environment. The images are minimalistic, with a strong awareness of composition, contrast and form. Captured between 2015-2018, the works feature sparse components; tree trunks, concrete structures, hard lines and architectural features. Human details are set against this backdrop, inviting a consideration of the experience of the diminishing untrammeled natural world as it is viewed through the lens of a postmodern landscape.

The imagery is inspired by a fascination with architecture, seasonal change, modern cities and the impermanence of individual human activity in constructed settings. Subjects grasp the available fragments of natural elements in engineered settings; mother and child soak up a dose of sunlight, a tree stands in conversation with an empty bench seat, a figure gazes at the ocean. Can the horizon drown out the encroaching concrete and bitumen? These urban scenes are contrasted with imagery pertaining to what was once a more authentic representation of nature and the passing of time - gnarled wood, melting snow and charred bushland.

This exploration is furthered by the imagery's seemingly subconscious tendency to anthropomorphise organic and constructed forms; tree trunks mimic human form, architectural form mimics human gesture. Thereby a simulacrum of the human in natural and built environments is created, as both an acknowledgement of and an attempt to latch on to this fleeting connection.

All images were captured on film using a Fuji Xpan and Hasseblad 500C in various locations in Australia and abroad.