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Habitat was a mixed media site specific
installation for Phoenix - a dystopian but still beautiful post apocalyptic garden. The idyllic feel created by the sound
of rippling water and the artificial garden setting was repeatedly interrupted by artifacts that suggested a presence other
than the viewer. Humorous though these interventions were, they had an underlying threat.
'In her artificial environments, MacDonald explores our complicated relationship
to nature. Her technique reminds us continually of the artifice if our surroundings - the mix of natural and artificial materials
is evidently essential to the conception of the piece - and this push and pull, the visibility of edges, the homemade
quality of certain plants and structures, means we have to face the dysfunction of the space. Alternately seduced and brought
up against the kind of wrongness that only occasionally appears in nature (in such ways as the duck billed platypus looks
stuck together with glue), she positions us at the edge of illusion and materiality. Yet this pretend nature imported into
the gallery space reminds us of our connection to nature as much as our distance from it. In its serenity, attention to detail,
and in the ‘otherness’ of the presence of the goldfish there’s an awareness of nature’s ability to
surpass the jokes and simply ‘be’, even if the essentialism is a bit twisted.'
Loretta Stone 2006 Habitat catalogue
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