Fragile Canvas brings together environmental artist and photographer Martin Hill and his partner and collaborator Philippa Jones, who in 2011 created a year-long series of ephemeral land sculptures in the Wanaka region and on New Zealand’s South Island West Coast.
Building on Hill’s transition from commercial design to environmental art in the early 1990s and the long-term Fine Line project, Fragile Canvas interrogates the clash between a "take–make–discard" economy and nature’s cyclical patterns in which nothing is wasted. The work anticipates debates around the Anthropocene by framing humanity not as a distant observer of landscape, but as a system designer whose choices disrupt or restore planetary equilibrium. Circular motifs recur throughout, suggesting interdependence and the possibility that human-made structures could one day align with ecological feedback loops rather than oppose them.
Visually, the series centers on precise geometric forms—circles, discs, and spheres—inserted into expansive lakeside, river, and alpine settings. Partial arcs built from ice, stones, sticks, or leaves are optically completed by their reflections in water, creating a calm symmetry between constructed and given elements. Color photography registers seasonal shifts over the course of the year, from autumn foliage to winter snow, while natural light at dawn or dusk creates long shadows that emphasize the temporary sculptures’ vulnerability. The resulting images cultivate stillness and clarity, inviting slow looking rather than spectacle.
Technically speaking, the project is grounded in a strict ethic of non-polluting, site-specific construction and in-camera resolution of visual effects. Sculptures are built exclusively from found natural materials that are left to decompose or disperse in situ, making the photograph the sole lasting trace. Hill and Jones rely on careful previsualization, low or elevated camera positions, and demanding physical labor—climbing trees, working in winter conditions by rivers and lakes—to secure a single decisive alignment of form, light, and reflection.
Fragile Canvas first appeared as a solo exhibition at gallery thirty three in Wanaka before traveling to the Otago Museum 1877 Gallery and later to the Arthouse in Christchurch, supported by the documentary film A Delicate Canvas and a shorter companion video. The project received enthusiastic local reception and positioned Hill and Jones within a growing discourse on sustainability in contemporary photography, laying conceptual and visual foundations for subsequent series such as the Guardians.
