Tracy Sarroff

Verisimilitude – science fiction and science fact – is the intersecting enquiry between ecology and science that brings Tracy Sarroff's solo exhibition Altered States to ARC ONE Gallery in Melbourne. The show embodies deliberations on transgenics, biotechnology, and microscopy that showcase a variety of conceptual ideas exploring the material and aesthetic interests of the artist. 

With a self-proclaimed interest in science, Sarroff’s series Cyber Plants, 2017-21, examines the proliferation of growth in bioluminescence science, focusing on methods of genetic and fluorescent protein cloning from cellular organelles spliced into animals and plants to glow in the dark. With a haunting display of lit tentacles, and colourful celestial glows, the hybrid plant forms provide a gentle reminder of unsettling ideas around food production and the manipulation of nature. Tracy comments, “The light sculptures of Cyber Plants are about the proliferation of growth, bioluminescence, and the structural composition of living things at a micro (cellular) and macro-level.”

Next, a concatenation of Cyber Plants, Tendril Series, 2018-20, is a sequence of ambiguous images purposely manipulated to confuse the viewer about the source of their reality. Blurring the aesthetic lines between art and science, Green and Orange, 2018-20, mimics living bioluminescence and microscopic structures as seen through the images of a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Sarroff describes, “the photographic ploy was to blur fact from fiction by transforming an authentic, inanimate object into something enigmatic and biological.”

Investigating further into the science of hybrid forms and artificial interventions, Sarroff’s ceramic sculptures examine patterns and structures sifted from the natural world and recombined to represent the organic attribution of growth and transformation. Where bands are symbolic of constricting, taming and ruling nature, one lone flag symbolises notions of nationalism, possession and triumph. “In man’s quest to own and conquer every corner of the earth, the flag heralds ownership, patriotism and conquest,” states Sarroff.

In a micro-galaxy of luminous tentacles that move and contort with a gentle ebb and flow, Red-Green Morph, 2018-20, is an elegant beauty and insight into the mysterious and molecular world of the microscopic. The stop motion footage signifies another altered state of the original Cyber Plants. Created from a series of pictures, the ambiguous, hypnotic forms of the life-like creatures generate a curiosity to question the source of their natural biological conditions. “Without having seen the original references, people question and interpret the source of the footage,” says Sarroff.

The verisimilitude of Altered States is of gentle hauntings, eerie landscapes and molecular spheres. The interlude between science fiction and science fact, the Frankenscience of curiosity is an insight into Sarroff’s enquiring and scientific mind, and her social comment on biological manipulation and human control to exploit all living beings, great and small. 

EXHIBITION
Altered States
23 March – 23 April 2022
ARC ONE Gallery, Melbourne