Artist Statement

In All Is Ephemeral, Kohl Tyler explores notions of ephemerality within the current context of a world amid mass extinction. Featuring watercolour paintings and ceramic sculptures of both lived and imagined subjects drawn from the natural world, Kohl's latest body of work grapples with the transient nature of life and the contrasting human impulse to care and conserve as a means of processing her ecological grief.

Atmospheric watercolour paintings of fleeting natural phenomena such as the ‘green flash’ on the horizon and the sighting of Comet McNaught — both of which are cased in protective yet fragile ceramic frames — at once preserve temporal instances and serve as a reminder of Earth's relation to the cosmos. The accompanying ceramic sculptures of ambiguous and alien forms with matte bone-like glazed surfaces are evocative of otherworldy organic remnants that could have grown in the depths of the ocean or evolved on another planet. United by their poetic portrayal of time, the works proffer a contemplation of change and impermanence that echo throughout the cosmos and natural world. Significantly, this notion of change is perceptible through the materiality of Kohl's chosen mediums; watercolour paint granulates and blooms on cotton rag, just as thin ceramics warp and cascade during their alchemical firing process. 

 

The exhibition draws its title from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, in which he writes, 'All is ephemeral, both memory and the object of memory.' As a point of departure in which ephemerality is contrasted with the innate human desire to preserve, All Is Ephemeral poetically navigates the entangled space between the natural order and human intervention.