COLD WARM HOT!
Andrew Lacon, Amba Sayal-Bennett, Ruth Murray
For artists and architects marble has long been a material that denotes a higher value and status, perhaps not surprising given the inconceivable vast planetary processes of metamorphic action that is required for it’s creation. The moving of convergent tectonic plates, whole land masses to make marble from limestone. Or is it the idea of metamorphosis that has inspired this. this alchemy, this romantic reverse transmogrify, the ugly duckling, the diamond in the rough. The ordinary plain dusty rock taken down into purgatory to rise again as this veined silken ice like stone. From Ovid to Kafka, is it the two millennium of literature recounting our inherent desire for change or revolution.
A rich and irresistible tableaux explored here in the second of five shows working with artists concerned with materials and change.
Andrew Lacon works with sculpture and imagery to question how materials are understood and valued in different contexts and historical periods, particularly in relation to public display. Concerned with the perceived value and revalorisation of art and its audience, Lacon believes sculpture and photography are intrinsically linked. In his Reproduction of Sculpture series Lacon explores the paradox between the image, the object and its display or representation; with each iteration of the work being a reproduction and information deteriorating. Sculpture has been a focal point of photographic activity since the invention of photography in 1839. Today, as then, there remains a disjuncture between display and experience, and photographic representation of sculptural objects. Taking the Belvedere Apollo as inspiration Lacon seeks to reinforce the intrinsic and aesthetic values of the original sculptures, which are seen within the photographs. The works are an attempt to reintroduce sculptural qualities that are often lost in the process of documentation.
Amba Sayal-Bennett’s film Empire V, is a short animation created in the endless universe of TRON like Sketch Up. It features terrazzo renders as we flow from imaginary civilisation to civilisation with a doom loop audio track overlaid driving and dipping empire to empire. Sayal-Bennet has recently completed a scholarship at British School of Rome (B-S-R) perhaps inspiring the use of marble and terrazzo in her film. Empire and the wealth of nation states are always marble, our palaces, our palazzios. Our state buildings the architecture of Empire is marble and it is inescapable the material denotes power and the persecution of others to gain power.
Ruth Murray presents two paintings and two ceramic pots. In the paintings ‘Pope’s Den’ and ‘Santa Maria Maggiore’, the model, Tess is a technician from Utah working at the ceramics studio in Rome, she sits in an alcove in one of the seven Papal churches, encased by her surroundings. Murray uses pattern and light to transform tangible objects into pliable masses and shifting forms. Here the dynamic patterns in the marble vie for centre stage, the masoned stone is a simmering constellation of history and grandeur, leaving a stationary, solitary protagonist seeming distant, bored, trapped or lost.