Working across sculpture, printmaking and installation, I use my sensitivity to site and process to examine ephemeral traces within the built environment. I am interested in how the mediatisation of site-specific phenomena, such as the incidental light cast through apertures in architecture and the marks accumulated on surfaces over time, solidifies to temporarily produce an essence of space.
One way this materialises in my practice is in large paper pulp casting of architectural features in places that hold a personal, cultural, or historical value. The casts become pseudo-palimpsests of a complex history of space. A dynamic interplay between memory and materiality reveals the indexicality of traces: pointing towards different times, alterations, and interventions, while simultaneously redirecting attention inwards, alluding to the sculpture's own making. As such, the cast objects have an indexical relationship to reality; it is a direct impression of an object at a given moment in time, in effect, comparable to indexical objects like death masks or footprints. Wherein the absent object’s presence is materialised, though inverted and otherwise changed, in the impressions of form fixed in these skinned artefacts.
In my eyes, the casting process compresses these many layers of the original structure's history into a single, short-lived representation. As such, these cast forms require a nuanced negotiation of time; my conscious choice to use non-durable materials, paper and bioplastic, evidences the passage of time as they are inevitably vulnerable to change. These casts, while serving as tangible manifestations of memory, are themselves susceptible to degradation and eventual obsolescence and, in this sense, embody the impermanence of material existence. My works resist fixity; they evolve with time: pulp casts warp and tear, bioplastic cyanotypes gradually expose, capturing the progression of light. The durational process of my cast traces of spaces deteriorating mimics the natural processes that transform real buildings into ruins.
Ultimately, my artistic practice engages a complex interplay between permanence and impermanence, solidity and fragility, and absence and presence. This emphasis on the temporal complexities of materials in flux starts to question the stability of foundations, and by extension the purported permanence of the institutions which rely on them.
Online
Mapping ( ) Beyond Sight
Floor 2, Algha Group Ltd, London
GUM
The Handbag Factory, ASC Gallery, London
Beneath The Surface
Città della Pieve
Postgraduate Showcase
Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Arts
Cost of Opportunity
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Host
St Saviour’s Church, Pimlico, London
Silent Observer
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Third Space: International Festival
AVA, Ljublijana
Everything Must Go
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Test Drive
Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Arts
Weatherby’s Exhibition Spring 24
Weatherby’s Private Bank, London
The Queer Museum: International Exhibition
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Floor 2, Algha Group Ltd, London
GUM
The Handbag Factory, ASC Gallery, London
Beneath The Surface
Città della Pieve
Postgraduate Showcase
Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Arts
Cost of Opportunity
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Host
St Saviour’s Church, Pimlico, London
Silent Observer
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Third Space: International Festival
AVA, Ljublijana
Everything Must Go
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Test Drive
Triangle Space, Chelsea College of Arts
Weatherby’s Exhibition Spring 24
Weatherby’s Private Bank, London
The Queer Museum: International Exhibition
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Studio 18, Millbank Tower, London
Departure Lounge
ALG17, Chelsea College of Arts
One Thing Leads To Another
Cookhouse Gallery, London
To What End?
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Big Little Show
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Paper Stories
Cookhouse Gallery, London
Alchemy of Objects
Central Saint Martins, UAL
Open Studio
H010, Central Saint Martins, London
Henry Moore Studios & Gardens, Hertfordshire
Aperture
Central Saint Martins, London
Hampstead Heath
Open Studio
Central Saint Martins, London
Finsbury Park
End of Year Exhibition
Leith School of Art, Online
Adjecter, Collaborative publication from Toby Christian’s Ergodic literature workshop