Rachael Champion

Racheal Champion’s approach to sculptural installation combines elements of art history and ecology, environmental concerns and consumer markets. Frequently employing the materials of heavy industry to house living ecological elements such as plants and grass, she presents transgressive architectural forms with dreamlike qualities. Her interest in the interrelated potential of biology, technology, and its future in the sustainability of life is recognisable in Carrying Capacity, 2011. In this site-specific installation forms resembling air tanks seem to feed into a clinical, tiled room populated by carefully composed horticultural structures. The completeness of her final work involves the layering of commonly opposed materials in symbiotic partnerships, suggesting new possibilities for the plant life and manmade habitats to create hybrid environments. However, the desirability and practicality of such spaces remains unclear, allowing the work to carry undercurrents of the ongoing commodification of natural resources and the potential of dystopian futures.