Ðrawn αssociation

In just under a week’s time Nathan Gray’s program at Craft Victoria closes. Nathan’s work explores the interrelation between generated visuals which evolve from a genesis of sound and music. The interplay between sound, colour, pattern and form is explored in various platforms in the world at large.

Sound and the visual have a unique relationship. Just recently I sat mesmerized in a cubic room in the back of Monkey Town, a Brooklyn bar and bistro dedicated to providing an interactive media space for artists and musicians to display their work. That evening the music of Mike Thies on keyboard and drums and cellist Topu Lyo, otherwise known as Live Footage, interacted with digital imagery that danced across the four walls of the room and bounced over the faces of the audience. It was magical to see moving imagery that led, or trailed from, the live music. The visual seemingly sprouted from the instruments before us.

Live Footage in performance.

Such interplay is akin to the sprouting of plants, emerging by some invisible life force into the world from seedlings and rooting into larger spheres of presence. It’s also akin to the growing of forms from water and salt, the emergence of crystalline shapes in more extreme climates. Gray’s work touches on these phenomena. His sculptural works are charged with this synergy and emerging force. For me they see the emergence from a beginning of totally abstract elements, that then grow and emerge and intertwine, creating an altogether conglomerate beauty in newness. Gray’s creative process can also be seen in the published work - “people, plants plants, plants plants, people”, and through websites such as ‘The Biclops’ .

In the words of Nathan Gray:

all these works are primarily responses to materials and experiments with them but form a set of works which though abstract (hopefully) resonate with viewers imaginations in unique ways

For further investigation:

Blurb.com

People and Plants

Plants are the Strangest People

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