Fremantle artist Emma Margetts with the piece Ghost Dog II from her upcoming show, The Savage Garden.
Marie Nirme www.communitypix.com.au   d475213
Camera IconFremantle artist Emma Margetts with the piece Ghost Dog II from her upcoming show, The Savage Garden. Marie Nirme www.communitypix.com.au d475213 Credit: Supplied/Marie Nirme www.communitypix.com.au d475213

Savage Garden: Fremantle art exhibition to help animals

Jessica NicoFremantle Gazette

THERE is an unnerving quality to Emma Margetts’ latest collection of work.

The Fremantle artist has dropped children and animals into a series of dream-like landscapes stylised in the form of late 19th century portrait-style photographic images for her new exhibition, Savage Garden.

Margetts said her paintings explored humanity’s separation from and superiority over nature by positioning children in a “questionably imperialist” relationship to their animal counterparts.

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“I loved the phonetic juxtaposition of the two words ‘Savage’ and ‘Garden’ – with the violence of savage and the tranquillity of garden I thought it summarised something poignant about the brutality and beauty of the world and humanity,” she said.

It is a double opportunity for the artist, who will use the exhibition both as a means of getting more of her work out into the local arts scene and as a fundraiser for Animals Australia.

“As art making can sometimes be a slightly egotistical endeavour, I find adding an altruistic or humanitarian purpose to my art making helps give it meaning and purpose to me,” she said.

“I choose Animals Australia because there are a lot of animal paintings in this show as well as paintings that deal with the relationship between humans and animals, which is sort of a metaphor for humanities relationship to the planet.”

Savage Garden is at the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery from November 11 to 25.

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