Biophilia | Vashti Johnstone

Vashti Johnstones’s latest exhibition playing out at Susan Badcock’s Gallery in Geraldine is aptly called Biophilia, a term first used by Erich Fromm in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (1973), where he describes biophilia as “the passionate love of life and of all that is alive.”

Walk in the door and it is the painting Bedrock that subtly establishes that innate and genetically determined affinity of human beings with the natural world. A small child’s tender relationship with the oh so much bigger animal elicits an immediate response and as we travel up the stairs we reflect on our own relationships and the part that nature and animals play in giving us solace.

At the top of the stairs the emphasis shifts. Now the animals are smaller, the people, grounded in a natural world, are more arresting, demanding our empathy.The colours, reminiscent of earth, sky, foliage and fading sunsets, create an inner world where the bond between human and animal is poignant and oddly comforting.

Vashti is an accomplished artist and this latest exhibition, inspired, as she herself says, by a world dominated by covid, fear and rules and regulations, sucks us into a world which is tender, free and devoid of artifice.

A must see.

Review by Michelle Denson