CROOKED RAIN, CROOKED RAIN

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is an exhibition of works by artists who address relationships to the natural world, reframing the natural world as an ecological system that is co-extensive with a broad range of supranatural materials and concepts. The exhibition includes video work, two- and three-dimensional work, as well as plant life, wishful thinking, polystyrenes, a water-cooling system, and a host of other agents.

There are artworks that reference psychoactive plants (Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Melanie Bonajo), the automations of Swedish forestry production (Edward Clydesdale Thomson), environments of spiritual enrichment (Veit Laurent Kurz) and morphologies of animal, vegetable, and mineral form (Gemma Anderson). These artistic approaches do more than take the natural world as a passive and addressable "thing" or mute reference. Instead, the natural world is understood here as an active system with incorporating powers of its own. Alongside works by contemporary artists are a selection of prints by photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1865–1932)—close-ups of plant life that simultaneously emphasise the mechanistic structures that exist in nature and the camera's revolutionary powers of magnification.

Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is curated by Matt Packer (Director, CCA Derry~Londonderry) in two separate versions, at CCA Derry~Londonderry and Lismore Castle Arts St. Carthage Hall, County Waterford. The exhibition title is taken from an album by Pavement.