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Sharon Singer Wanderlust, 2019 Acrylic and oil on canvas 710mm x 560mm
Sharon Singer is an award winning Dunedin based visual artist. Her work is held in private and public collections in New Zealand and internationally. She has worked with fairy tales and myth as the subject of her paintings since 2000, Invoking concerns such as narrative and meta-fictional awareness. In more recent years her work has addressed the themes of climate crisis , the Earths spiritual meaning and consumer value, either as a vast mystery or a source of consumable resources. Underpinning all is an interest in the human condition in relationship to nature.
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Simon Swale Fairtrade? 2020 canvas and brass sheet metal
This work is part of a series, entitled “Fairtrade?”, that focuses on the production of one of the world’s most popular and highly consumed food items: bananas. Banana production is highly destructive to the environment, a foodstuff that is responsible for the clearing of vast tracts of rainforest and the subsequent use of high levels of agrochemicals that deplete and destroy both the soil and the surrounding eco-systems. Controlled by a few, large, multinational corporations, bananas are generally grown on large plantations with workers living on site, with production rife with human rights abuses. In 2011–2012 alone, seven Guatemalan banana union members were murdered.
