Force Majeure

Force Majeure, 2023, is part of the Watermark exhibition (28 January to 3 June 2023), located at the Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum.

Force Majeure is a short film that refers to the European romantic landscape tradition and questions the practice of art making in general. The location is the Island of Rügen, in northern Germany, which the romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich would visit and paint in the early 1800s. Over a period of six months, Hirst attempted again and again to film herself painting a seascape while in the midst of terrible weather.

The film questions traditional landscape art by revealing the gap between an event and its representation, as well as the futile ambition to capture vast phenomena within a small rectangular frame. Beyond this, Force Majeure could be seen as a manifesto about the shifting position of the artists as we enter the new era of The Anthropocene

Image: Stefan Handy for Meadow Arts

 

About the artist

Gabriella Hirst

Gabriella Hirst (she/her) is an artist. She was born and grew up on Cammeraygal land (Australia) and is currently living between Berlin and London. She works primarily with moving image, performance, and with the garden as a site of critique and care. Gabriella’s practice explores the politics of capture- most recently in relation to museums, gardens and irrigation. She maintains an ongoing research/garden project with curator Warren Harper navigating the entanglements of nuclear armament and colonial gardening practices.

Gabriella’s recent projects have been exhibited and commissioned by the Kunsthalle Osnabrück (DE), Focal Point Gallery (UK), The Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Australian Center for the Moving Image (AU). She is the recipient of the 2020 ACMI/Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, is a previous Marten Bequest Scholar and a recipient of the John Crampton Fellowship. She is an associate lecturer in Media Studies with the RCA School of Architecture.