Writing
I will be using this page to re-publish some writing by others about my practice.
Oikos: Entwined Bodies, Living Networks. Joseph Falsone
Limbs and lines intertwine: male bodies and the boughs of trees caught in a dance of growth, shadow, and light. Some lean as if seeking; others twist, escape, and reach, bending toward sustenance and their own fragile claims to space. The human form, present yet veiled, is neither fully seen nor fully hidden, merging with a forest where contours are by turns boldly asserted and dissolved among boulders, trees and leaves.
In Oikos, Peter McLean explores the interconnectedness of the human and the natural. Bodies and landscapes coexist as intertwined entities in works created with charcoal, acrylic, chalk, soil, and layered linocuts. Drawing from photographs and observational sketches, McLean reframes lived experience into a montage of excised and recombined forms. His method overlays physical trace and presence, inviting the viewer to imagine intimate contact with an environment that reveals co-operation and embrace — clusters of trees giving mutual support in harsh conditions, for example. This is a world that promises aesthetic pleasure, sensual joy, and spiritual communion; it’s also a site of risk, obstacle, and sharp discomforts.
Through layered iconography — entwined figures, vegetal shadows, vivid silhouettes, and tactile interplay of colour and texture — McLean offers a meditation on the interdependence of bodies, landscapes, and social structures. His work evokes the heroic male figure, often depicted classically in strong, dynamic poses. Yet within these entangled landscapes, animistic vitality challenges the detachment of the idealised form. The male body, historically tied to culture and control, violence and domination, becomes tender and porous — exposed, vulnerable, and enmeshed in an ecological web. Echoing queer photographic culture, McLean’s figures push against a 19th-century art-historical legacy that centred the female body as an object in the landscape and a vessel for heteronormative male desire.
The title Oikos directly invites reflection on the interwoven realms of the domestic, natural, and economic, highlighting a concept at the root of both ecology and economy. In ancient Greek, oikos meant “home,” encompassing not only the household and its inhabitants but also its resources, power structures, and the interplay between private and public spheres.
McLean, informed by his background in ecology, gardening, and art, resists the binary of nature versus culture. His practice challenges the notion of ecology as something “outside” humanity, a pristine realm separate from the domestic or the economic. Instead, Oikos presents a world of interrelation, where human life is inextricably linked to environments bearing the marks of millennia of cultivation, exploitation, and stewardship. The “natural” emerges as both product and shaper of culture: the abundant custodianship of Indigenous communities, the extractive abuses of settler-colonial exploitation, and the complex interdependencies of abandoned and rewilded landscapes in the Anthropocene.
McLean’s chosen mediums reflect these themes of connection and constraint. His drawings evolve organically: some begin with human figures that are gradually obscured by vegetation, while others anthropomorphise natural forms in a process of searching, striving towards resolution. In the Oikos prints, McLean embraces the reproducibility of printmaking, combining a finite set of matrices to discover new rhythms and relationships. The silhouettes, derived from photographs of plant shadows and bodies, capture fleeting moments of physical interaction with the environment. Blocks of colour — yellows, blues, browns, and pinks — alternate between background and foreground in endlessly dynamic combinations. The resulting forms are precise yet ambiguous, inviting viewers to piece together their own narratives.
At its heart, Oikos is deeply personal. The landscape elements are drawn from visits to specific sites in the desert uplands and coastal hinterlands of Queensland. Many of the figures stem from self-portraits taken during solitary interactions with those landscapes. The gestures are neither exhibitionistic nor detached. Instead, they position the body as a site of belonging—to the earth, to community, and to the act of creation itself. While McLean hints at larger ecological and economic themes, his work suggests that resolving our present crises requires cultivating intimacy and solidarity. Desire and eros, aesthetic connection, and physical presence may offer pathways out of the paralysis that often afflicts scientific knowledge when it fails to inspire political action.
As viewers step into Oikos, they are invited not only to observe but to participate—to consider their own place within the web of relationships that define “home.” In a world where economic and ecological systems are devastatingly at odds, Oikos reminds us that home is not static. It is a living, breathing network — fragile, complex, and alive with the potential for both tragedy and joy.
Joseph Falsone, December 2024
Oikos was a solo exhibition at Belconnen Arts Centre, Canberra. Dec 6 2024- Feb 2 2025