Further Closer is a personal narrative reflecting on human impact, loss, change and the poetics of anthropomorphism. The work considers the complexities of anthropomorphic tendencies inherent in human thinking, and offers a playful exploration of human proximity to nonhumans. What sets humans apart from nonhumans? Genetic mapping indicates that we share the same DNA as many other organisms yet the resilience of anthropocentric thinking persists. This constructed divide between humans and nonhumans is impossible to map as a single line, but rather the ‘space’ between these two points exists in realm of the imagination, of fiction and poetry, of the abject and aberrant.

Bruno Latour suggests that anthropos and morphos together mean either that which has human shape or that which gives shape to humans’ (Latour 2009:237). I’m interested in exploring the imaginative space of the human tendency to anthropomorphize. When we anthropomorphize we create a fiction (a source of error, an untruth). The stories we tell ourselves and the fables of the past inform the human experience of identity and belonging. How we critically interrogate anthropomorphism in all its complexities and contexts has urgency and relevance in moving forward towards a shared sustainable and ethical future.

Jane Finlay is an Australian artist based in Perth, Western Australia who has completed a Graduate Diploma in Photomedia from Edith Cowan University (2012) and a BFA Visual Arts (Hons) from Curtin University (1997). Jane looks to the photographic medium to document and explore relations, patterns and perceptions of the inter-connectivity between animals, people, places and particles. Her perceptual practice aims to seek out the strange, questionable observations of lived experience. Jane has participated in collaborations, international residencies, exchange projects, artist talks and has exhibited work on line and in galleries and public spaces in Australia, Asia and Canada.