FRANCES GYNN
2023
Size: 140cm x 130cm
Medium: Graphite on paper
 
‘Public Erasures’ by Frances Gynn is an interactive art concept which involves the artist producing a drawing or painting of multiple images of  endangered species which the public are invited to erase or obliterate as a metaphor for the loss of the species. The interactive element  combined with the subject matter offers both a visceral and intellectual experience encouraging debate, personal public response and shared information.
 
This work ‘Public Erasure - Hedgehog (Post Erasure) has been erased, or partially erased, as its title suggests. My choice for the subject came about when I heard a girl ask her mother if ‘hedgehogs really existed?’. Just one species among many, for which it’s unbearable to contemplate that we might not ever see again.
 
The hedgehog is on the Great British Red List (VU). All ages took part in this erasure at The Forest of Imagination event in Bath. The interactive art piece was thought provoking for many with some reporting that it was a ‘criminal act’ to symbolically ‘destroy not only the hedgehogs but the drawing also’. A realisation that this is what humans are doing followed.
 
The rate of species extinction is 1,000-10,000 times faster due to human activity. Loss of habitat, over-exploitation, climate change and pollution are responsible. Frances Gynn’s work has, for some time, been informed by nature and human engagement with it, particularly more recently environmental issues. As plastics became more evident in the landscape, her artistic practice reflected a growing concern for the human effect on the environment. What does it mean to be connected with nature?
 
£7,000 framed