Unearthed, 2018
hand-processed terracotta slip-cast, particleboard, digital print on plywood, perspex, water, fixings
Exhibited at Floating Goose Studios
Exhibition catalogue, essay by Roy Ananda.
My grandfather, Juris Klavins, emigrated from Latvia to Australia in 1949. In the late 50s, his daily labour centred upon ferrying clay from quarry to brickyard. Prior to building the Klavins family home, he inspected each brick to ensure its quality. After the house was complete, a stack of these bricks was left aside, remaining untouched for decades. This year, with the future of my grandparent’s home becoming suddenly tenuous, my sister and I decided to pull a layer from the stack.
Unearthed draws upon the notion that humans are geological agents within the current age of the Anthropocene. We shift matter across the earth’s surface at a greater magnitude than any non-human force. We sculpt landscapes into new forms, whether pitting the earth as a quarry miner does when extracting clay, or a bricklayer who builds upwards with excavated matter.
This body of work also considers the unfixed nature of our constructed environments. Over time, our built spaces slowly yield to non-human activity. Footpath pavers transform into swollen topographical sites, their tessellating forms thrust up by underground movement. Our anthropocentric stratum is quietly disrupted and reclaimed.
Through considering these contrasting scales of forces and time, these works attempt to draw out the poetic and affective potential of matter. Processes of gathering, filtering, extracting and casting are layered upon familial and material histories, both condensing and expanding these timescales and relations.
Images by Grant Hancock.
