Frenetica

Kim Foale

The textured surfaces of these Southern Ice touch stones have been created using cigarette lighters and shells as stamps. The cigarette lighters were taken from the stomachs of dead Laysan Albatross Chicks on the Kure Atoll in Hawaii in 2009.

Disposable cigarette lighters, designed to be thrown away float on top of our oceans. Adult Albatross collect these lighters in their search for food and feed them to their chicks.

Eventually the Laysan Albatross Chicks stomachs fill with plastic pollution and die from starvation. Plastic bottle tops, balloon clips and cigarette lighters are the main pollutants.

These touchstones whilst beautiful are a deadly reminder that we are filling our oceans with plastic pollution.

image by Robin Roberts

Frenetica

Philadelphia Hanson-Viney

Artist Statement

I am often inspired by the weird, the grotesque and the wrong. I love things which are beautiful and horrible and bizarre at the same time.

I am fascinated by bones for their delicate and intricate shapes as well as for what they represent as relics of life past; they can be a strong symbol of death and yet exist as an object with a beautiful form.

I am inspired by the small objects that are left behind, things that are lost and weathered and buried. There is something significant about holding an object with a history behind it and I love this feeling of holding the weight of the things the object has seen.

With my sculptural ceramic work I have been studying shapes that I have previously explored through drawing. I have worked to create pieces that reflect, through their forms and surfaces, the graceful shapes of bones and the feeling of holding something ancient. I have spent a lot of time finding ways to create texture in my work that evokes the way bones crack and crumble as they decay. Most of my pieces are painted with iron oxide to bring out their texture and highlighted with matte glaze.