Immaterial at the Iittala & Arabia Design Centre, Helsinki
As is often the way at the beginning of the year, I find my mind reflecting on 2018 and the massive journey I went on. It has got me thinking about how my work is developing, the move into installation and also the nature of the materials I use and how I use them. One key element from last year was my inspiring trip to Helsinki where I had chance to experience Immaterial at the Iittala & Arabia Design Centre. The show focussed on the use of glass and light in its simplest format to create ethereal forms using shadow and LED's. I was so entranced by it I stayed for several hours and just pondered.
My biggest takeaway was to think about how something so simple could create something, in some ways, so startling, simultaneously simple yet complex in its outcome. The precision of the work was inspiring and influenced my thinking about Empyrean, my collaboration with Holly Early in 2018. The petri latex dishes I created were much more pared back than other recent work, and this for me, changes the essence of them and contributed to the overall effect.
This has also taken me on a journey around the term Immaterial, I'm quite intrigued by one of the definitions related to philosophy - "spiritual, rather than physical". This is a simple way of defining what it is I'm trying to create when I make something, it's about the indefinite rather than the concrete. Despite the esoteric nature of thinking about the spiritual there is something quite dynamic about the term, it has an ethereal quality while feeling more 'real'. I get the feeling that I'll be pondering on this for quite a while!
In the mean time, enjoy these beautiful images.
