INTRODUCTION

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I spent hours watching insects. 

When time was not an issue, when I had all the time in the world.

Beetles on the sand at the beach leaving their footprints.
Dragonflies hovering around the fountain at the school.

Caterpillars at the back of the leaves creating their cocoons.
Grasshoppers in the garden jumping around.
Butterflies expressing their beauty at my grandma’s courtyard, (the wasps being a bit scary, I would watch them from the distance)
My favourite: the honeybee.

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I was fascinated. I mean, who wouldn’t? They make honey! Humming and buzzing, communicating in that hypnotic language. Their curiosity, their heart, their confusion, their clarity. The honeybees’ elaborated, detailed, close to magic, yet simple organisation, or should I say organism, always made me wonder about cycles, purpose and systems. Such small, social, hairy, noisy and nosey creatures have the capacity to turn the harmony of the world upside down if we don’t care for them. How can that be even possible? I mean, it is not just the bees, right? There is just one way, for that to be true. Everything, EVERY SINGLE THING must be connected. And If everything is connected, the way we tell stories, in every media we possibly choose, is connected too! Could be possible to tell stories that preserve the harmony of this system we called earth/universe?

Three women, three generations, three artists telling stories of care in three different media, connected to each other, connected to the past, the present and the future, connected, as Peta explains, through colour, patterns and texture... The relationship, the container, a “Proportio Divina” which put them together: The Golden Ratio.

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Inma J. Lopez 2020

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The initial idea for this exhibition “The Golden Ratio’ took form during my final year of study at Grays School of Art, Aberdeen. One of our main assignments at the end of our studies was the much-dreaded academic dissertation. Obviously, my topic was going to be about bees, I undertook the research for this task with much enthusiasm. One of my main interviewees was Michael Joshin Thiele, a German apiculturist. We exchanged a WhatsApp conversation between his home in California and my shared student flat in Aberdeen. From this conversation I had an image instilled in my mind – bees with frost-bitten toes. Around this time my mum sent me a photo of a new project she was working on; a knitted quilt constructed from very small padded hexagons. The wool was left over sock wool from various socks supplied to me, my daughter and several friends over many years. 

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Meg Miller 2020