Something has gone askew in the fundamental order of things. We attempted to fix it, but stuff is stubbornly elusive in nature. We tried preserving the environment, but ran out of sodium benzoate halfway through. All romantic clichés were prohibited, yet the sunsets persist. Any remaining holes in the Ozone were filled with bubblegum-flavoured bubblegum. We prescribed a smorgasbord of ADHD meds, anti- anxiety pills and calamine lotions, but the fields grow restless still. The Mountain DewTM sprinkler systems only cultivated a rise in weed obesity levels while, despite the instalment of thousands of swimming pools, the deserts are as impoverished and thirsty as ever. We ensured all our free-range organic oceans were bottled at the source with approved levels of iodine, fluorine and fluoxitine. We even invented an instrument to measure Spring with. Maybe gravity got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Maybe the tides just need to be turned off and on again.

They say that perhaps tomorrow, it will be fine.
(Weather permitting, that is)

Toying with the representation of Nature as a pure and extra-cultural phenomenon, The Nature of Stuff and Things positions environments as deeply embedded in systems of interaction and exchange. Landscape, an idea inseparable from convention, is used as a medium to explore how personal, economic and visual value structures are projected onto the exterior world.

The “things” hail from an imaginary terrain, where anomalies are the status quo and matter mischievously imitates its observers’ personal quirks and desires; a mirage replete with existential predicaments and riddled with logical fallacies. Through techno-alchemical dabbling, familiar objects are subjected to extraordinary situations, while synthetic by-products are released back into the wild for the first time. Swayed by a process of post-natural selection, real and imagined associations of the land are superimposed, disrupting any essential purity which may be anticipated.

The products of this anxious arcadia are self-awarely escapist and ascribe to a kind of cynical optimism. They re-imagine natural phenomena yet the translation process is muddled, resulting in perplexing incidents and curious interactions; a misunderstood utopia. This process grasps at (and appears to tame) its subject, but has the quixotic efficiency of catching mist in a butterfly net.

Miranda Moss (b.1990) studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, where she received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (2012). She was awarded a distinction in sculpture and the Michaelis prize for her graduate show Ephemerology. A notable precursor to her engagement with landscapes include a powder painting of Signal Hill for which she was awarded first prize in the under-twelve section of the Cape Town Art Eisteddfod (2002). Moss has participated in several artist-run pop-up shows and curatorial projects and with Brundyn+, has exhibited work at the FNB Joburg Art Fair (2013), the Cape Town Art Fair (2013) and the group show –in (2013). The Nature of Stuff and Things is her first solo show, and has been heavily, if not entirely, influenced by information gleaned from Chappies wrappers.

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