Ottilie Mason

Multidisciplinary artist and designer, Ottilie has produced works that include painting, sculpture, assemblage, installation, performance, set & costume design, print-work, craftwork and more.

In these images performative personae are situated in narrative scenes of desertification, garbage atolls, melting polar ice, a kitchen consumed in a sea of jellyfish, a soothsayers den, to a table overflowing with the fruits of the sea as if set for a Caligula feast.
Memento Mori of environmental apocalypse co-exist within seemingly accessible and perfect realities and suggest the absence of balance. Decadence, indulgence and absurdity are deployed as provocative missives to trouble our apathy.

“My aim is to create dialogue about the environment by creating glamorous and interesting images that make people think and act. I think art should be useful, and that art for art’s sake is delusional. I do not differentiate between “high” and “low” art forms – both have potential to inspire. I use cross-media techniques synthesized from a lifetime of experience working in different disciplines.

Works in this selection are a ‘performed photography’. They are essentially about water and the polluting of water. I am playing around with ideas and ideals of beauty, of humour and melancholy.

Swimming in the water of northern Ontario feels like crystal velvet. It is healing and sublime. I get really upset when I find garbage like plastic in the water, it feels like a crazy crime; and it is that feeling of injustice that has inspired these works. When I last exhibited these works in Miami I liaised with the environmental charity 5 Gyres to bring awareness and donations to fight plastic water pollution. I continue this commitment in the sale of these works with the pledge of 30% of my artist proceeds.”

Please visit www.5gyres.org if you would like to support their mission.