Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain Curated by Matt Packer

In 2015, Lismore Castle Arts presented Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, curated by Matt Packer which opened on February 13th and continued until April 12th, 2015. This was an exhibition of works by artists who address relationships to the natural world, presenting the natural world as an ecological system that is co-extensive with a broad range of materials and concepts. The exhibition included artworks, as well as plant life, wishful thinking, polystyrenes, a water-cooling system, and a host of other agents.

There were artworks that referenced psychoactive plants (Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Melanie Bonajo), automated forestry production (Edward Clydesdale Thomson), environments of spiritual nourishment (Veit Laurent Kurz) and morphologies of animal, vegetable, mineral form (Gemma Anderson). These artistic approaches do more than take the natural world as an addressably static and mute reference. Instead, the natural world is understood as an active and continually reframeable space.

Alongside works by contemporary artists was a selection of prints by photographer Karl Blossfeldt, produced in the early 20^th century. These photographs are close-ups of plant life that simultaneously emphasise the mechanistic structures that exist in nature and the camera’s revolutionary powers of magnification.

The development of the exhibition had been informed by then recent writings (Timothy Morten, Bruno Latour) that propose new understandings of ecology and ecological objects and their extension beyond human perception. The title borrows from an album by Pavement.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was curated by Matt Packer (Director, CCA Derry~Londonderry).