alexandra carr mrss

A Subtle Manipulation

In this body of work crystal growth has been subtly manipulated for us to muse upon the concepts of structure, order and chaos. Photographs by Andrea Harris.

This project was conceived during a six-month artist’s residency in Iceland. Struck by vastly contrasting forms, colours and textures coupled with an overriding sense of perpetual geological growth and regeneration I began to focus on the boundaries between these polar opposites. The volatility of instant and powerful transformation versus the glacial, calm, resolute progression of growth, became ever present. Containment, control, manipulation and potential energy became an undercurrent to the vast, sprawling, chaotic disarray laid before me. The duality ever present in the landscape stirred me to demonstrate how these opposites coexist and contradictorily rely on one another for existence. As darkness is merely the absence of light, the balance between order and chaos is merely a statement of entropy that will inevitably change over time.

This project has since grown into a longer term collaborative project titled 'This Will Change Also'

‘This Will Change Also’ encompasses a number of smaller bodies of work, each exploring notions of time, transformation and boundaries between states of matter. It began as a collaborative project with geologist Dr Sven Lukas, and has since developed into many branches of investigation.

Process and material are at the heart of this work. By contrasting natural, organic materials with man made, engineered mechanisms, the project will survey themes of transience and transformation by exploring materiality. We will create work that changes its physical form over time, highlighting decay, growth and regeneration of perpetual geological systems. We will use moisture, temperature and pressure as tools to forge natural materials into a time based media, pushing the limits of the material, provoking us to question our perception of material and the fragility of our environment, accenting our need for permanence and legacy in a transitory world. This work will challenge the way we think about materials, structures and our place as transient beings in the environment. The wider context of this project raises climate change issues but philosophically it raises questions about our mortality, destruction and our connection to the environment.