Melting act, 2020
concrete, lead, pewter, bitumen, heating element, water, pigment, digital prints on paper, fixings
Exhibited at Cool Change Contemporary, Perth, WA.
Exhibition catalogue, essay by Chase.
Each day this week is in excess of 40 degrees; a haze of heat radiates from the city’s broad bitumen roads, its hardened surface becoming unbound as tar seperates from aggregate, its tacky surface lifitng as vehicles roll across. Incrementally, our constructed environments yield to non-human activity; our anthropocenic stratum quietly disrupted and reclaimed. Expansive areas of road and concrete become geological layers with the potential for microclimates, faults, and erosion to occur.
Influenced by the material and spatial language of 1960s minimalist sculpture and the Mono-Ha movement of Japan, Melting act draws out the poetic failings of industrial materials and their relationship to deep time. Acts of casting allow one transient layer to be recorded within another, embedding within itself generative histories of time, forces, action, and repair. Melting act is a sculptural exploration of our relationship with shifting climates and built spaces in the current age of the Anthropocene.
Images by Paul Sutherland.
