Isthmus, Installation View, 2023

Isthmus (Sisters), 2023. Aluminium, silicone, sylvite, salt, ground limestone, chalk, peat, quartz, albite, bearthite, dolomite, marl. 190 x 150 x 40cm approx.

Isthmus (Sisters), (Detail) 2023. 190 x 150 x 40cm approx.

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.

Isthmus (Carbo Carbo), (Detail) 2023. 380 x 95 x 190cm approx.

Isthmus (Carbo Carbo), (Detail) 2023. 380 x 95 x 190cm approx.

Isthmus (Carbo Carbo), (Detail) 2023. 380 x 95 x 190cm approx.

Isthmus (Sisters), (Detail) 2023. 190 x 150 x 40cm approx.

Isthmus (Sisters), (Detail) 2023. 190 x 150 x 40cm approx.

Isthmus (Sylvinite), 2023. Paper, food dye, salt. 29 x 15cm.

Isthmus (Cutter Suction 1), 2023. Silicone, steel, silk, dried foxgloves, quartz, polyester, pigment. 140 x 180 x 20cm approx.

Isthmus (Cutter Suction 1), (Detail) 2023. 140 x 180 x 20cm approx.

Isthmus (Aethelryth), 2023. Ash, silicone, peat, quartz, cadmium sulphide. 55 x 37 x 20cm approx.

Isthmus, Installation View, 2023

Isthmus (Cutter Suction 2), (Detail) 2023. 150 x 45 x 37cm approx.

Isthmus (Aesculus), 2022. Silicone, dried horsechestnut petals, pollen, anthers, calyx. 75 x 40 x 8 cm approx.

Isthmus (Appenine), 2023. Paper, food dye, salt. 29 x 15cm.

Isthmus (Carbo Carbo), (Detail) 2023. 380 x 95 x 190cm approx.

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Andesite, Installation View, 2021

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.

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.

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.

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.

Danake (detail), 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx.

Danake (detail), 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx.

Danake (detail), 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx.

Danake (detail), 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx.

Danake (detail), 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx.

Danake (detail), 2020. 410 x 85 x 45cm approx.

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.

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.

Achene, 2020. 75 x 25 x 10cm approx. Silicone, dried buttercups, steel, aluminium.

Kordyle (detail), 2020. 170 x 35 x 45cm approx.

Andesite, Installation View, 2021

Left: Andesite (Doublet), 2020. 32 x 17cm. C-type print on paper.
Right: Achene 1, 2020. 76 x 41 x 3cm approx. Aluminium, steel.

Andesite (Doublet), 2020. 32 x 17cm. C-type print on paper.

Achene 1, 2020. 76 x 41 x 3cm approx. Aluminium, steel.

Children of Adoh (detail), 2020. 280 x 310 x 35cm approx. Silicone, steel, aluminium, obsidian, opals, basalt sand.

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.

Text by Boris Jardine and Miriam Austin

WORKS IN PROGRESS >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>