‘Aftertime’ draws on the philosophy of Timothy Morton, who asserts that ‘the end of the world has already occurred’(1) and the work of Michael Marder, who posits that plants inhabit a temporality that is neither linear nor circular, but branching, open ended and generative.(2) Both writers consider the entangled existences of human and natural worlds, as well as the vast expanses of geological time. The works in ‘Aftertime’ deal with this idea of extended duration by conceiving of the life and natural cycles that preceded us and will inevitably outlive us. Fletcher’s phantasmagoric paintings reveal a world conspicuously devoid of human subjects, where vegetal life surges with unchecked vigour, thriving in perennial bloom. Striated, ribbon-like brushwork can be seen to oscillate between flatness and depth, mimicking the unfurling of flora and conveying a sense of unstoppable growth.

Over the past 20 years, Fletcher has developed a process-led practice, one that involves the direct channelling of imagined imagery onto the canvas. Painted ‘wet on wet’ in a single sitting, sometimes extending up to a 12-hour stretch, Fletcher’s method engages the body in an act of physical endurance. This physical relationship between the artist and her canvas can be charted through the paint, which is scraped, dragged and dripped across the surface. Loose, gestural passages of paint wind around each other, creating a complex network of forms suggestive of sinuous stems, foliage, petals. The product of an intuitive approach, her works combine a freedom of expression with a chromatic vibrancy, one that speaks to the inherent dynamism and variegation of vegetal life. Many, if not all, of the paintings make use of layered colour and coiled marks, both of which serve to crowd out the foreground, all but eclipsing a pale-coloured ground.

The artist draws upon numerous art historical references in her practice, notably the painter Georgia O’Keeffe, with her paintings of geological formations and awe-inspiring landscapes, and the jostling forms of Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler, along with Joan Mitchell’s abstract meditations on the natural world. Certain of the paintings, such as the effulgent ‘Fugue’ series (all 2024), echo the changing seasons or diurnal passages of light. Noonday Demon (2024), for example, invokes the glare of midday heat through thrashes of mercilessly hot reds and ambers. Contrastingly, Winter’s Curve (2024) features muted greys, velvety mauves and flashes of beige; here, the looped strokes instead infer breaking clouds amidst mighty, darkening skies, behaving as the artist’s personal reinterpretation of Renaissance celestial scenes. Against a ground of lighter strokes, tenebrous curls of paint rise and branch, introducing a verticality to the composition that draws the viewer’s gaze upwards, towards sky-bound presentiments.

Fletcher’s post-human world is one haunted by absence; here, humankind is only occasionally alluded to by the artist’s evocative choice of artwork title. Reflecting on the recent global pandemic, and revealing Fletcher’s fascination with the science fiction thought-experiments of Ursula K Le Guin, Antigen of Self (2024) employs a lurid yellow that imagines a future reformed by viruses. Elsewhere, Fletcher’s frenetic yet fluid strokes imply a struggle, with titles such as Bloodsport (2024) and Come Away Bruised (2024), invoking the corporeal fragility of the missing human subject.

From vignettes of rugged, wild regrowth to visions of inhospitable weather or overbearing skies, ‘Aftertime’ presents us with our familiar world made foreign. Teeming with abundance, the artist’s work simultaneously betrays a sense of loss, acknowledging humankind’s tenuous position within the ecological order and its coexistence with non-human agency. Anticipating the future, Fletcher’s work invites contemplation about our place in the world, swaying, as art historian Barry Phipps notes, ‘between landscape and memory, the seen and the unseen, and the invisible forces of the scientific and haptic world.’

(1) Timothy Morton, Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2013, p.18
(2) Michael Marder, Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life, Columbia University Press, New York, 2013