Scarlett Hooft Graafland: Discovery

Scarlett Hooft Graafland’s surreal, dream-like photographs provide the lasting record of her carefully choreographed, site-specific sculptural interventions and performances in some of the most isolated corners of the earth. The exhibition Discovery draws together more than a decade of exploration, from the salt desert of Bolivia to the desolate Canadian Arctic, the island of Madagascar and the remote shores of Vanuatu, where her interactions reflect an exchange between the boundless realm of nature and the relative confines of culture. This is her first solo exhibition with Flowers Gallery.

Hooft Graafland’s images emphasize the ‘natural strangeness’ of the landscape with uncanny juxtapositions of everyday objects and materials. Local customs and stories are interwoven throughout her work, re-interpreting and re-imagining mythologies related to the landscape. Rich, earthy pools of spices gather within blinding white salt flats in Carpet; balloon-clad figures stand against striking azure skies in Burka Balloons and Salt Steps; and bare, surrealistically detached legs wrap playfully around a giant, spiked desert cactus in Discovery.

Hooft Graafland’s sculptural arrangements exist only briefly, or for the duration of the photograph, anchoring each image to the time and place of its execution and dispersing back into the environment without trace.