Fruiting bodies

James McArdle and Lorena Carrington submitted to the Castlemaine State Festival competitive curated process the exhibition 'Fruiting Bodies'  which was accepted under the Fesitval theme: 'Pressing Matters'.  James McArdle’s practice is to use the qualities of the medium to reflect on itself. Camera vision and human perception are often compared; this is a simplification, but full of potential that might illuminate the nature of vision and attention. Haptic senses are stimulated in the eye by ‘racking’ focus (normally a cinematographic effect); and elsewhere with tilt-shift techniques; while ‘dollying’ the camera by hand around a still point renders the concentric vortex effects. A sense of physical presence and immersion is evoked with the exhibition. Fruiting Bodies’: is an instance of the application of this practice employed to ask the viewer to consider how strange is the phenomenon of the fruiting tree: is it promiscuous to offer your seed openly to the elements, to any who will take it. Is this forbidden? Is it profligate to hide your progeny inside gifts so tempting in their appeal to that most primitive desire, hunger? Is this wholly mere biological expedience evolved to ensure the widest migration of your offspring? Or does it derive from some boundless cosmic generosity? These images invite you to come close to the tree, where within its arms you will find shelter from the sun at its zenith and from the autumnal rains. Fruit is the focus of James’s lens as it circles deep into the embrace of limbs and leaves.