NOTTINGHAM, UK.- Inspired by a six-week residency at a preservation site in the Brazilian Rainforest, artist Dawn Badland produced a new body of work, Track Changes, using natural science research techniques to interpret her experience of staying in an isolated environment. Track Changes includes screen-prints, relief paintings, light boxes and resin casts that offer an original interpretation of research data associated with rainforest conservation. The imagery is achieved through unconventional methods using conventional information gained from the scientific research process. For example a light box which looks like a burnt map or lace, like filigree; faintly traced on it with paint are contours - mountain ranges, ridges, tracts of land. There is also the series of four canvases with ‘found’ objects embedded within Perspex cases mapping the mountains of the Sierra do Mar. Track Changes clearly demonstrates the transformative aspect of the artistic process. The experience of place, the research and looking at material, the integration of all aspects of these and then the re-created total experience made solid in the form of art works.

To accompany the exhibition there will also be a sound piece based on the traditional guitar music of Brazil combined with the sounds of the rainforest. There will also be a display of Butterflies and insects that are rarely displayed from the Wollaton Natural History collection.

Badland describes her work as "essentially non-figurative, I look for external references that can introduce surprising or ambiguous elements and lead me in new directions. I frequently work in mixed media on a gesso ground to create surfaces which have a resemblance of marble, brick or plaster weathered by time and the elements. Often, these scraped and fissured surfaces contain marks, holes and motifs that are reminiscent of tracks, traces, maps and patterns".

Track Changes is a unique project developed with the support of the Brazilian Rainforest Trust and the Sassoon Gallery in Folkestone, East Kent. The Brazilian Rainforest Trust is an International Natural Science Organisation based in Chichester, West Sussex. It is dedicated to the conservation of the threatened environment, in particular to an ecologically important tract of Atlantic rainforest in South East Brazil. In 1996 The Reserva Ecologica de Guapi Açu (REGUA) was set-up as a protected forest site.