Heat Wave

2024

1200 x 2200 x 160mm approx.

Retrieved from a throw away, its purpose long gone

Salvaged, loved, understood, transformed

Cut to reveal nuances in time, 

Abrupt exposure to radiant fuel

vulnerabilities emerge

forms collapse

snarled by life’s bitter twists

Before it’s too late

Snap freeze

Displayed on edge under an observational spot

Undulations of a story unfold

What was, what is and what is now, the new normal

 

Heat Wave is an installation work that utilises form language to express a deep concern for the climate crisis. Heat Wave’s taxonomy of forms relies on the fundamental relationships between glass, heat, and material depth to foster a dialogue on the capability of heat to destabilise.

 

The individual elements speak of community, coexisting in chaotic order, all important participants of a much larger whole. The pieces are made from reclaimed Salamanazar bottles (9L), the kind that are typically blown either by hand or by machine into a mould for uniform size and shape. Whilst indistinguishable by their volume, these bottles are often never consistent in their makeup. Upon being cut into cylinders the true instability of these bottles becomes apparent, when the wall thicknesses are revealed to drastically vary from a full centimetre, to less than a millimetre.

 

This inherent irregularity in the manufacturing process is one of the main elements Heatwave draws upon to create a diversity of forms, each of which is frozen in time amidst twisting, curling, and folding in the heat of the flame. Each patch of thin and thick deforms more and less, respectively, causing each unique ring of glass to collapse in its own distinct way. 

The deformities invite new perceptions, 

a metaphor for the evolution of time, affect, result, adaptation, survival or not.


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Möbius Chandelier