Scorched

Scorched is rooted in the southern Victorian Otway Forest, a place I live in and return to, a landscape recently scarred by fire. Here, place is shaped by cycles of burn, regeneration and increasing volatility, as climate change intensifies and unsettles natural rhythms. 

The charred timber, at human scale, confronts us – their burnt surfaces carrying the physical language of fire. They stand as monuments, enduring the transformation and elevating the gaze toward the luminescent glass forms they support.

The glass is blown into moulds lined with Eucalyptus sideroxylon bark. The liquidity and nature of the material captures every fissure and fold with exacting fidelity, an imprint identical to the original surface. In glass, these textures are held in suspension: described by light, fragile and eerily flesh-like. As a material capable of enduring time, the glass becomes an archive, preserving a tactile record of living history irrevocably metamorphosed by fire.

Scorched stands as a contemporary time capsule, a ghostly portrayal of the beauty that was. Insisting on presence and witness to the developing imbalance whilst quietly depicting environmental equilibrium.

Mould-blown glass, timber columns, 2025

Photography by Fred Kroh