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Edwin Roseno / Indonesia b.1979 / Lucky Bamboo (Dracaena) (from ‘Green Hypermarket’ series) 2011–12 / Digital print on aluminium, ed.1/5 / Gift of the artist through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2013 / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © Edwin Roseno
Edwin RosenoLucky Bamboo (Dracaena) (from ‘Green Hypermarket’ series) 2011–2012
Not Currently on Display
Edwin Roseno’s ‘Green hypermarket’ 2011–12 is a series of images that uses combinations of everyday materials — plants and consumer packaging — to question the relationships and associations that they have in our lives. Using cans, bottles, cartons and plastic containers bought in supermarkets, Roseno potted a variety of plants sourced from friends, neighbours and local nurseries. The photographs present the symbolic dichotomies of natural and manufactured, renewable and discarded, local and global, and ancient and modern.
The images contrast our emotional connections to both commercial products and plant life, with the realisation that some consumer goods are more recognisable than many plant species. ‘Green hypermarket’ is a poignant reminder of economic and environmental tensions that are increasingly relevant today, particularly in the growing economies of Asia, where urbanisation, globalisation and mass consumerism have evolved rapidly, and younger generations grow up in societies that no longer rely on traditional or local customs.
Edwin Roseno was born in 1979 in Banyuwangi, East Java. He first studied product design before moving onto photography at the Indonesian Institute of Fine Arts in Yogykarta, receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2008.
Working primarily in photography but also in video, Roseno’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions including ‘Beyond Coca-cola’, Ruang MES 56, Yogyakarta (2005) and ‘Frozen City’, Kedai Kebun Forum, Yogyakarta (2009).
Roseno has been actively involved in the artists’ collective Ruang Mes 56 in Yogykarta, which has played an important role in the development and exhibition of contemporary photography in Indonesia.
Discussion Questions
The artist has used a Coca-Cola can in his artwork. From your visits to the supermarket, what other brands could you see this artist using in his ‘Green hypermarket’ series?
Activities
1. Arrange a series of recycled containers, tins and bottles on a table to create a still-life arrangement that makes a comment about our consumer lifestyle. Draw, paint or photograph your work and give it a title.
2. Research to identify which of the world’s leading brands and companies contribute to the environment’s destruction. In what ways could their impact be reduced or eliminated?