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Isthmus (Sisters), 2023. Aluminium, silicone, sylvite, salt, ground limestone, chalk, peat, quartz, albite, bearthite, dolomite, marl. 190 x 150 x 40cm approx.
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Isthmus (Carbo Carbo), 2023. Jesmonite, wax, fat, blood, kerosine, steel, salt, aluminium, hemlock, weylan blossom, rocks from the river Po. 380 x 95 x 190cm approx.
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Isthmus (Cutter Suction 1), 2023. Silicone, steel, silk, dried foxgloves, quartz, polyester, pigment. 140 x 180 x 20cm approx.
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Danake, 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx. Jesmonite, obsidian, salt, silicone, steel, spirulina, pottasium aluminium sulphate, conch shell, wax, aluminium, dried foxgloves, red cabbage infusion, tulip wood, raw opals.
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Danake, 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx. Jesmonite, obsidian, salt, silicone, steel, spirulina, pottasium aluminium sulphate, conch shell, wax, aluminium, dried foxgloves, red cabbage infusion, tulip wood, raw opals.
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Danake, 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx. Jesmonite, obsidian, salt, silicone, steel, spirulina, pottasium aluminium sulphate, conch shell, wax, aluminium, dried foxgloves, red cabbage infusion, tulip wood, raw opals.
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Danake, 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx. Jesmonite, obsidian, salt, silicone, steel, spirulina, pottasium aluminium sulphate, conch shell, wax, aluminium, dried foxgloves, red cabbage infusion, tulip wood, raw opals.
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Clockwise from top left: Gimmel (Rangitikei), 86 x 40 x 7cm approx. Silicone, steel, dried weylan blossom.
Achene 3, 202. 66 x 17 x 2cm. Aluminium, steel, thread.
Bradoon, 2020. Silicone, steel, resin, leather, silk, basalt sand, salt.
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Left: Kordyle, 2020. 170 x 35 x 45cm approx. Phormium tenax, silicone, pigment, resin, ground glass.
Right: Achene 2, 2020. 75 x 25 x 10cm approx. Silicone, dried buttercups, steel, aluminium.
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Children of Adoh (detail), 2020. 280 x 310 x 35cm approx. Silicone, steel, aluminium, obsidian, opals, basalt sand.
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Children of Adoh (detail), 2020. 76 x 140 x 35cm approx. Silicone, obsidian, sand.
Andesite
Andsite
was an exhibition that took place at Bosse and Baum Gallery, London, Dec 2020- Jan 2021.
The exploitation of the
earth gives birth to two children: the widow Annie Kelly, raising her children
in a tent in 19th-century Aoteroa New Zealand, and, beneath the ground, the blind god
Adoh, whose hundred unseeing eyes are witness to a dark future.
Andesite is set at the threshold between these two
worlds: the mythical subterranean city of Selvaga, in which organic
technologies are manufactured, promising reprieve from ecological crisis; and
the real, ancestral story of Annie Kelly, Austin’s great-great-grandmother. The
works in Andesite continue a conversation with the dead, opening up the psychic
and earthy spaces of extractive industry, colonial settlement, and matrilineal
communion.
In Selvaga, floppy machines
harness the energy of Alset, the rider who moves through time and slips between
zones. Ehusea is a figure of technological sacrifice, vulnerable yet
protective, aggressively reaching towards a post-carbon future. Andesite does
not resolve the question of whether the disaster has already occurred: the
fragile products of human ingenuity are in permanent conflict with geological
scales and processes.
The works in the exhibition
emerge from a series of experimental practices and a body of research that have
opened a form of ancestral communion within which new narratives, histories,
protagonists and landscapes - real and imagined - coalesce. Spanning sculpture,
installation, drawing and performance, and incorporating materials linked to
specific sites and histories: volcanic black sand, obsidian, opals, turban
shells, silicone, plastics & ground glass; the works trace stories that
depict diverse forms of relatedness that cut against dominant approaches to
landscape, environment and kinship found in patriarchal Western societies.
Andesite is haunted by figures that raise urgent questions about care and
responsibility, reimagining the nature and limits of the family and expanding
them to include a vibrant network of human and non-human agents.
