The Natural, Rural and Remote
What is the place of nature in modern life? Do we need to reestablish the connection? With The Natural, Rural and Remote, Eva Louisa Jonas researches the (dis)connection with nature, its romanization, and the emotional response nature as a protagonist in the images produces within a viewer. Deciding to focus on ordinary activities — closely related to the human being in nature — and the bridge between rural and natural, Eva examines the internal metamorphosis of a person. Recreating activities such as climbing a tree, stacking stones, and flying a kite remind of the playfulness and joy that comes from connection with nature as kids.
This playfulness materializes during the exhibition when exhibited materials are changed, removed, or added. The concept of a 'live' exhibition is reminiscent of the artist’s way of creating new links and connections while working on a project at home, bringing this creative experience to the gallery space. Black and white imagery of actions taken in nature evokes a sense of calmness and completeness, the notion of eternity with ever-changing surroundings.
Eva Louisa Jonas is a UK-based visual artist, facilitator, and co-founder of the platform UnderExposed, which focuses on building a community of artists dedicated to practice-based research. Eva is the first artist in residence at SERCHIA Gallery in Bristol, where she exhibited her ongoing project, The Natural, Rural and Remote. Her first book, Let’s Sketch the Lay of the Land, was published in 2020 with September Books.
In this interview, we discuss the research collective UnderExposed, which highly influenced Eva’s approach to the creation and conceptualization of work. As Eva describes, ‘This project has really informed my approach to working within the arts and allowed me to find intimacy in transparency within a collective experience rather than looking inward.’ We speak about The Natural, Rural and Remote, the ways of documenting the natural world, and the visual and emotional response this connection to nature generates.
Photography by Eva Louisa Jonas SERCHIA Gallery Curated by Christine Marie Serchia Research Collective
‘What started as conversations around the sustainability of working within the arts became an active inquiry into exploring how we can support artists to reflect on ways of working and the wider structures at play.’
Hi Eva, it’s very nice to meet you! While researching your work, I discovered you are a co-founder of a research collective, UnderExposed. Can you share a bit about the idea behind connecting artists in a practice-based approach and your role in it?
Thank you for having me and taking the time to sit with my work!
Alongside my photographic practice and work within arts facilitation, I also work on a research collective called UnderExposed. This project is commission-based, and we have taken a bit of a break this year to apply for funding.
The project came together out of an interest in ways artists sustain their practices, myself and three other co-founders are artists or curators working for art organisations. What started as conversations around the sustainability of working within the arts became an active inquiry into exploring how we can support artists to reflect on ways of working and the wider structures at play. The practice-based approach refers to how the projects — ranging from large-scale commissions to workshops and publications — often involve an embodied exploration of the structures and challenges art workers move through.
To give an example, last year, we ran a workshop for Terms of Engagement, an ongoing project that reflects on the language of participation. In the workshop, we interrogated the role of curator through collective play, asking the groups of participants to work together in building a structure whilst reflecting on their roles in the making of it together. The foundations of the structure were used to gather and hold responses and activate connections between their individual practices. It was playful and simple and more about having a reflective conversation than anything else!
This project has really informed my approach to working within the arts and allowed me to find intimacy in transparency within a collective experience rather than looking inward, alongside a sense of solidarity in what is often quite an individualistic industry.
‘The exhibition covers three strands of imagery as an exploration of different visual entry points we can associate with natural, rural, or remote locations.’
The ongoing series, The Natural, Rural and Remote, currently presented in your solo exhibition at SERCHIA Gallery in Bristol, addresses the theme of nature and (dis)connection people sometimes experience going through life, forgetting the stronger, perhaps unconscious, link that once was there. What is your experience of rediscovering nature through this project?
For me, the project was about positioning ideas of connection or disconnection within the types of imagery we associate with documentation of the natural world. What types of imagery are we used to seeing? What response does this elicit for us? Whom are these images for? Aesthetically, when do we deem it to be more legitimate imagery?
The exhibition covers three strands of imagery as an exploration of different visual entry points we can associate with natural, rural, or remote locations. One strand of images taken is of activities associated with a romantic take on nature connection that of spending time in nature, deepening one's understanding, and tapping into the ‘inner child.’ These images show a figure or gesture, climbing trees, fruit picking, stacking stones, and flying a kite. These types of activities are not new or groundbreaking but are somehow presented within visual culture as the right way in which to deepen our connection.
In the center of the room, the second strand, a research assemblage comprised of images, objects, and ephemera that I had collected over the years, acts as a kind of pillar, informing my approach to the image-making that surrounds it, including the above. The restaging ideas are taken from postcards and books.
‘Alongside making the images in the exhibition as a visual recording, my process when making the images also involved collecting text and sound-based responses to the environment.’
Your exhibition at SERCHIA is enhanced by a workshop you held on creative processes. In addition, the exhibited materials will change and be removed or added throughout the time the work is on display. Could you speak about the creation of the experience for the viewer through using gallery space and the connection with people during the workshop?
My work in creative facilitation runs in parallel with my visual arts practice, and although the work itself has a participatory element to it, in that the restaging images were made through a dialogue with friends or people I had met doing the activities, I also wanted to respond to the gallery space and its setting.
The gallery sits between two gardens and has a greenhouse space attached to it. It felt very fitting for the work as well as the pieces included on the research assemblage — leaves and stones. Alongside making the images in the exhibition as a visual recording, my process when making the images also involved collecting text and sound-based responses to the environment. Rock, sound, and cut-out drawings have become a way to sit with these spaces a little longer, responding to their overlapping intricacies and gestures whilst recognizing the types of imagery I am taking and how the overall experience in a place informs this.
I wanted to circle back to the location and reflect on it with others in a workshop setting. I shared three simple prompts with those who joined, and it became a really nice conversation around how we experience places and processes that can help us unravel spaces. Changing, removing, and adding materials to the research assemblage was reflective of the ongoing collecting I do, often placing postcards or newly collected stones or leaves around my room. Them changing from week to week depending on what is the most recent postcard or walk taken to collect a leaf or pebble.
It was only when I realised I was sitting within an ever-evolving display of research and reference material that I felt it would be interesting to include this within the exhibition. Allowing the images to orbit around it, suggesting new connections and links as the objects or images change throughout the exhibition period.
Exhibition space photographed by Will Moss
‘The main questions that form the foundation of this work are around a (re)consideration of who documents the natural world and what it means to be looking outwardly to capture an inner experience.’
Your central topic of exploration currently deals with exploring people through their bodies, experiences, and behavior in connection to landscapes. What are the main questions you are looking into while working on this theme?
Within my work, I’ve always been interested in the body in landscape and the processes by which it is held within a space, both directly in the capturing of the body in an activity or moment within a landscape to the hum or trace left behind in a space — like the patchy light-coloured circle that remains after a paddling pool’s summertime stint in the back garden.
I like to dance between photographing as an observer and participant, someone looking on followed by a more intimate or participatory image — this can be seen quite literally in the images in the exhibition that restage an action, like stone stacking or kite flying.
The main questions that form the foundation of this work are around a (re)consideration of who documents the natural world and what it means to be looking outwardly to capture an inner experience. Other explorations are around playfulness and remaining open and receptive to the unknown within natural environments.
What are you working on right now, and what can we expect from you this year?
I have more images to add to the Natural, Rural and Remote from shoots over the summer at a meditation retreat and photo festival held in a valley in Switzerland. With those added, I’ll have a look at the new edit and see how it’s all sitting together.
In the future, I’d like to make a book with the work that’s a kind of playful take on a guidebook for how to be in nature — a silly take on something that needs no instruction and has no right way to do it… I’ll be looking to get funding for this, so will spend my time in late autumn and winter chipping away at an application.
I’d also like to build a participatory project that links to the activities that are restaged and then photographed, activity packs to send to people to photograph themselves doing, like flying a kite or stone stacking. So, a few ideas are in the works. Let’s see what materializes!
