detail of the insulation.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
insulated birds nest story.
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ballyannan forest, middleton. Cork.
Whilst walking through these woods that run alongside an estuary, I found this birds nest that had dropped from the threes onto the stony shoreline... not too far from where the nest had fallen was a pile of thrown away/washed up housing insulation. The bird that owned the nest had used this material to line her nest.
Looking back through my images, I realised that over the years of walking in these woods i had photographed this pile of material on every visit without thinking about the potential consequences of the material. The idea that this bird had used a man-made material to keep its eggs and herself warm as she incubated, it became a strange outcome for a material that was thoughtlessly dumped. Just as the woods reclaimed the walls of old buildings then the birds would use what we wasted.
Tuesday, 2 November 2010
puddle cast
a positive cast looking down on a puddle it came from. reflective casting, reminiscent of the flow of land...
'grounded' drawing.
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this model of a oil tanker sat in the National Waterfront museum earlier in the year for an exhibition that explored our complex relationship to oil, currently never too far from the headlines -be it spills or prices. I wanted to see what it would look like grounded in my collected PU foam pebbles, one of oils many byproducts.
Once discarded, the foam treated by the sea as any other material breaks down into such small cells, that along with other plastics is believed now to be amongst the chemical composition of sand on beaches and mistaken by fish and birds as food. Not good news.
holocene
whilst exploring the tidal stretches of the gower peninsula's rocky coast, i discovered these foam 'pebbles' trapped in tight gulleys. In various stages of erosion, they seemed to me to embody and contain some of the immense forces that the sea could pass on through to other objects.
They seem to almost be keeping the two sides of the cliff apart...or connecting it all together.
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testbed exhibition @ oriel davies
'Alex Duncan’s inspiration comes from the fragility and power of the natural world. Through a variety of materials he creates work with a hyper-realistic quality, questioning what is real and what has been constructed. The artist adopts the aesthetic of model-making or film-set replicas.
Alex Duncan’s work Eocene is literally wedged within the confines of the Test Bed space. Its position may remind us of peering into gaps between rocks at the beach and finding pebbles and flotsam stuck there after the sea has retreated. Eocene represents an in-between space and at the same time is presented in an in-between space for a specific time.
Duncan plays with scale. Drawing us into illusionary worlds he often devises spaces that take on a new history: a space which might tell the story of an ecological disaster or of an often overlooked moment in nature. He leads us to question whether what we see is real, art or something more complex that sits in between. He creates detailed and precise work, highlighting environmental and ecological issues and often confronts the viewer with an environment more akin to a film set. Instead of conforming to the expectations of a gallery space his work invites us to view it in a way we might if we had ‘discovered’ a meteor.
Our attention is drawn to a foam facsimile of a pebble the artist discovered. These 'pebbles' inhabit the inlets and rocky coves of our coastline, resting amongst their naturally occurring counterparts. Within Duncan’s practice all manner of materials are utilised as the artist attempts to capture moments within nature. By juxtaposing the man-made with the natural, and substituting the natural for a man-made equivalent, he highlights the disconnection between real and fake and the complexities of contemporary experiences of the real and the fake.
Eocene is carved and created from found foam (polyurethane). Duncan utilises a man-made material bound for landfill to create a work that questions our relationship with the environment and our acknowledgment (or not), of our responsibilities.
“Within these sought spaces, events and objects can exist that can take us somewhere else; whether they are artworks that look found or found objects that look artist-made.” Alex Duncan
Alex Duncan is based in South Wales and spends as much time in the landscape as in his studio, choosing a poetic gesture of humour or focusing on detail to address a concern and connection between the world and the environment.
The title, Eocene refers to a major geological period in the history of the earth.'
Alex Duncan’s work Eocene is literally wedged within the confines of the Test Bed space. Its position may remind us of peering into gaps between rocks at the beach and finding pebbles and flotsam stuck there after the sea has retreated. Eocene represents an in-between space and at the same time is presented in an in-between space for a specific time.
Duncan plays with scale. Drawing us into illusionary worlds he often devises spaces that take on a new history: a space which might tell the story of an ecological disaster or of an often overlooked moment in nature. He leads us to question whether what we see is real, art or something more complex that sits in between. He creates detailed and precise work, highlighting environmental and ecological issues and often confronts the viewer with an environment more akin to a film set. Instead of conforming to the expectations of a gallery space his work invites us to view it in a way we might if we had ‘discovered’ a meteor.
Our attention is drawn to a foam facsimile of a pebble the artist discovered. These 'pebbles' inhabit the inlets and rocky coves of our coastline, resting amongst their naturally occurring counterparts. Within Duncan’s practice all manner of materials are utilised as the artist attempts to capture moments within nature. By juxtaposing the man-made with the natural, and substituting the natural for a man-made equivalent, he highlights the disconnection between real and fake and the complexities of contemporary experiences of the real and the fake.
Eocene is carved and created from found foam (polyurethane). Duncan utilises a man-made material bound for landfill to create a work that questions our relationship with the environment and our acknowledgment (or not), of our responsibilities.
“Within these sought spaces, events and objects can exist that can take us somewhere else; whether they are artworks that look found or found objects that look artist-made.” Alex Duncan
Alex Duncan is based in South Wales and spends as much time in the landscape as in his studio, choosing a poetic gesture of humour or focusing on detail to address a concern and connection between the world and the environment.
The title, Eocene refers to a major geological period in the history of the earth.'
the observers book of geology.
'From small, insignificant, and doubtful beginnings he becomes in himself a geological agent of increasing importance, comparable with the forces of nature.
Like these forces he can both destroy and construct.'
I.O. EVANS F.R.G.S.
Like these forces he can both destroy and construct.'
I.O. EVANS F.R.G.S.
'cove' detail
these foam pebbles were collected from the rocky coves and inlets of the gower peninsula, south wales... the polyeurethane material exists as expanding foam, cavity wall insulation and as ship/ bouyancy. The foam, dicarded into and then shaped by the sea becomes a perfect simulacra.
The piece consists of over 10,000 individual pebbles.
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