About

In the last few years, Gardenia's work has been focused on the question of the ability of art and artists to convey the experiences of war and destruction through artwork. She has been asking questions such as, can artwork depict the impact of the war and the injustice and human suffering that it causes? As an artist, she strongly believe that art can convey political messages that challenge common perceptions, some of which advocate and even promote wars. Art should be utilised as a public domain to express protest against wars and the devastation it brings with it.

In the immediate future she wants to focus on war and violence around the world, with special reference to the invasion of Iraq. She believes that the subject of war is affecting all of us in our volatile world of today. Also, the invasion of Iraq was not only a divisive and controversial issue of our recent history, which still generates a lot of debate and different opinions today, but also a very personal experience that touched me in more than one way. She believes that through her art she can document the subject and capture the essence of the suffering and the destruction that it inflicted.

Gardenia exploring her ideas through mixed media, collage, paintings, using smoke on paper and canvas, burning wood and 3D installations. Also, she using copper, rust and powdered metals as pigments experimenting with patinas to get the rust colour and old green colour from copper, a sort of alchemy.

In her works, she likes to utilise new materials and new methods. She thinks that, throughout history, artists have used their art-forms to document and to inform the viewer of events by depicting the suffering and devastation of war. This type of art has been very effective and straight to the point. Cameras and technology have also been very effective in showing the invasion of Iraq and other wars. But she tends to use an abstract style to pose questions and to make viewers think about this subject, like using flowers as a metaphor to show the death of the innocent and the burning, and rust and smoke to show footprints of the invaders and the damage they leave behind.