Development: Plateaus

Whilst messing around in the ceramics studio, I have also been trying to develop concrete casts for another idea in development. In fig. 1 (below) we can see the fragments that are as a result of mixing aggregates.

Thinking of ecologies, networks and processes - here I am using the terminology of Jane Bennett, Rosalind Krauss and Timothy Morton, should these pieces just be discarded? Are they now beyond purpose, now I have made other works from my casting and moulding fig. 2.

Fig. 1, Examples of fragments from my various casting processes in the basement of the Calcutta Studios Annex.

Concrete Deltas

The choice of my materials brings up ecological inquiries. We could look at this tray I used for mixing as a metaphor for soil and land toxification via aggregate production.

Vital essentialisms

Yet these same aggregates are employed in my making process.

Plateau I

This one piece of aggregate cast off sparked an idea that employs the re/using of these parts to reconstitute the foundation of my potteries that I am making in ceramics.

Self Portrait 2020

One example of my casting.

Square Jupiter 2021

My 3rd piece in a series of works that look to engage the viewer in what can and cannot be seen. Questioning access.

Cast mould breakdown

Opening the shuttering that set the mould

Concrete lampshade III

In the moulding process I have embedded a Lampholder and Lightbulb.

The use of materials that are enmeshed in human activities [6] that go building our environments that we exist in presents an interesting viewpoints for the implications of material choices and their intended uses as an artist and a maker in the midst of the 6th mass extinction (Cf. Rosi Braidotti 2019). And should these objects and the choice of materials conform to some other doctrine that suits the intent rather than reason?

Lee Bravier reminds us that anthropocentrism can misguide our acceptance and approach to our material relations “We suppose that our representation of things, as they are given to us, does not conform to these things as they are in themselves, but that these objects, as appearances, conform to our mode of representation” (Kant, C1 Bxx; see also A122, A177/B220).

I myself want to explore the relationship of these materials embodied in my making process and try to meet the object on its terms. Maybe the very products that stretch the planets finite resources are the same materials that can teach us about ourselves as we understand the Anthropocene.

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Out of the primordial. Plastics, Aggregates and Composites stand as evidence of my impact as an artist and human being enmeshed in a wider network of being.

This casting in the Annex basement stands as a testament to choose where I want my work to reside ecologically.

Bibliography:

Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013) 

Braver, Lee, A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism, (Evanston IL: Northwest University Press, 2007), p. 45–49

––2019, Posthuman Knowledge, (Cambridge: Polity Press)

Bennett, Jane, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, (North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2010) Harman,

Graham, Object Orientated Ontology, (London: Penguin Random House, 2018)

Morton, Timothy, Hyperobjects, (Minnesota, Minnesota University Press, 2013)