Exotic species of plants, flowers and fungi sprout out of luscious lips, from beneath a drooping eyelid, out of an ear canal. A fetus nestled within a multi-coloured mushroom tree that’s balancing on two interconnected feet. These trippy visions are what artist Celina Teague describes as an attempt at escapism: to shut out the noise and disappear into the weird and wonderful world of nature. It’s Not Me, It’s You, Teague’s solo exhibition at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery presents a powerful new body of work that breaks away from her news-driven narrative paintings of the past. And yet, the realities and anxieties of the human world continue to creep in.

 

While Teague’s work is typically born from a place of empathy and rage in response to crisis events, this latest series of paintings took its departure point from a desire to lose herself in a mystical realm where nature holds the power and can bend the mind. It is in the earlier paintings produced for this show that she best evades the grip of current affairs. Both Natural Mystic and Eye Opener – with their vivid forms and almost luminescent colours against nocturnal backdrops – depict a sense of calm and new-found creative freedom. In both paintings, the human and natural worlds are interconnected rather than at odds: portraits of a nourishing form of hybridity in which the human body is enhanced, healed and extended by nature.