00 An Unstill Life
An edible still life asking the passive observer to engage bodily with the work, giving them the choice to eat the art or watch it melt away. A contrast to the origins of still life work found in Egyptian tombs where the objects depicted stood in for gifts that would materialize in the after-life. Rather its a reflection on the impermanence (and statistical unlikelihood) of having a human body at all.
Chocolate, copper plated plinths and fire.
In cooperation with Cape Town’s Spier Art Festival
01 The Solitary Plaything: A Sensory Experiment in Isolation
Exploring play as a private, sensory pleasure seeking experience in contrast to the dominance of play as a socialization/ normalization tool.
Silicone, Sand, Felted Wool, Bela mini chip and touch pad sensors
Music composed by Maylee Todd
Sensor coding by Peter Bussigel
Made possible with support from the Canada Council for the Arts
02 Human/Rock Inter-Elemental Communicator
An imagined device from a future that uses technology in service of our collective wonder rather than exploiter of our labour and resources. When worn, this helmet allows the user to communicate directly with the limestone from which its made. When its cycle of human use is complete it can be planted and repurposed as luxury accommodations by microbes, insects and soft-bodied invertebrates.
Oyster shell restaurant waste lime plaster, salvaged fire-wire copper and up-cycled helmet
Rock Ghost (mesh form)
Fibre base layer begun
Fibre base layer completed
Lime plaster shell
Day 1
Moved by blizzard
Visitor from the South
Crack lower left
Moved by wind
No change
No change
No change
No change
Delamination in lower right
Delamination in lower left
No change
Visitor from the North + Hole + speaker taken
Collapse
Burial
Gone
03 An Open World Gallery Installation
The Open World Gallery isn’t a gallery but a series of questions for artists to consider. This project explores after answers to both “What value does art carry for people outside of the so-called “art world”?” and “How is there an ‘ART world’ separate from ‘THE world’?”. By installing a talking standing stone in a high traffic area of my neighbourhood, I had to wrestle with releasing my work into the wild without the contextualizing that galleries or descriptive plaques provide. I risked the destruction/ disappearance of the piece in exchange for an opportunity to observe genuine public response to my work. To do so without non-consensually surveilling the area, I took a series of daily(ish) photos alongside randomized audio activations. The snow became a map tracking visitors and vandals alike, documenting its life-cycle from installation day until its unforeseen end.
Lime plaster, seaweed glue, recycled glass, recycled pizza boxes, casein glue, bluetooth speaker
Made possible with support from the Canada Council for the Arts
04 Material Intimacy
With the two-headed monster goal of reclaiming the means of my own creative production AND soothing the torment of my climate guilt, I developed a regenerative approach to sculpture. A fossil fuel-free material that requires a devotional amount of care and cultivation. Both the process and recipe are born of my extensive research into lime plaster’s globe-spanning technical iterations and time-spanning recipe preservation as well as the varied ethnographies of ancestry, dreams, memories, ghost stories, info dumps amongst friends and sensory exploration.
Wild clay, seashell lime plaster, cow bone aggregate, cattail and foxtail fibre
Made possible with support from the Canada Council for the Arts
