si sapsford
Sculpture
I am interested in balance as a state of tension — the point at which something is held between opposing forces, meanings or possibilities. Sometimes this is physical: weight, gravity, tension and precariousness. At other times it is linguistic or conceptual, where an object or word sits between two meanings, or two states of being.
Memory, traces, things carried forward, what remains? Fragments of things, places, journeys and memories — gathered, carried forward and held in new forms. A word, a drawing, a trace, a found object: small remnants of something that has passed, brought together to make a new whole.
Structures mark, divide and occupy space. Found materials and architectural forms become temporary frameworks, thresholds and imagined places, shifting our sense of where we are and how we move through it. A structure can invite, obstruct or conceal; it can define a boundary or open up a space that was not there before.
Soft materials, domestic objects and the things of childhood hold the weight of illness, grief, hunger, erosion and the threat of catastrophe. A crocheted tea cosy takes its pattern from an electron micrograph of a virus. Liquorice laces become a toilet mat, flour becomes a sandcastle slowly giving way to the sea, and used J-cloths are stitched into a nuclear cloud. A child's toy rabbit weeps continuously, and a Wendy house takes over a gallery so that visitors must pass through it to enter. These works are made from what is closest to hand: comforting, familiar and easily deformed, and they ask what happens when the everyday is placed under pressure.
