EXHIBITIONS
Drop the Dust, Flinders University Art Museum, City Gallery 2010
The works re-present geological, biological and cultural accumulations with a sprinkling of star dust. (“This stuff, still holding its ancient grains of primordial stardust, settles on Earth at a rate of one magical speck per square meter per day. Hannah Holmes, The Secret Life of Dust, publ. John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2001)
The story of Dust ranges from the cosmos to the kitchen to the invisible and infinitely small. The exhibition works refer to the highly visible 2009 dust storm that swept up the ancient sands in the centre of Australia. Other works refer to domestic environments whose dust reveals the secret life of the inhabitants. And one work refers to possible pre-life forms in the cosmos that in reality are infinitely small, but are presented here in macro-scale.
The current study of Dust raises comparisons of structure and conglomeration - of how formal design and random collection interconnect in a continual process. The materials for the arworks are all originally dusts and sands; they are particle board, collected house dusts, powdered graphite, mineral powders, 100% rag paper, sand and constructed forms in mild steel with silver brazing.
The meaning of mortality is explored.
Drop the Dust: GEMS detail 1 2010 shattered glass variable dimensions. Photo Grant Hancock
Glass Embedded with Minerals and Sulphides ie GEMS are part of cosmic dust. Reference is made to the spontaneous collection of dust particles into patterns. A pre-life form.
