Shayna Fonseka’s work explores the ideas of the ‘alternate present’ and digitisation. Her work focuses on a fictionalised, ‘trans-naturistic’ realm, a place where nature has grown beyond its environmental and physical limitations and organisms disguise themselves within untouched lands. Using paint, plasticine and other tangible, pliable materials, she constructs images and sculptural artefacts ‘taken’ from this realm, often ‘re-digitising’ them, creating a further windowing layer between our reality and hers.
Plasticine is contorted into inventions of various specimens and placed into hand-painted fanciful landscapes. The impulsive methods used in the cultivation of these 'beings’ dictate their artificial development, constructing a believable sense of control for herself.
A set of five life-size plants, made from icing sugar, stand alongside information about their medicinal properties. All of the plants affect the human brain in a deductive way; destructing, erasing and blocking memory.
A literal view into a small aspect of Shayna's fictional world.
2018 EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT, San Mei Gallery, London
2017 Flock Graduate Exhibition, GX Gallery, London
2017 La Dia Blesse, 15f Micawber St, London
2016 Ecologically Conscious, Farmopolis, London
2015 Doleful Shade The Crypt Gallery, London
2014 Ben's Show, Arlington R, London
2011 White T-Shirt, Underground Gallery, London
