Making Time is a solo presentation of work by Ōtautahi Christchurch-based artist Steve Carr. Digital video and a series of sculptures are used to explore vastly different time- scales, whether they be geological formations, evaporation, everyday incidents or the growth of flowers.
Are objects halted time?*
A head leaves an imprint behind on a pillow. Water accumulates in the hollow of a deflated, backyard basket- ball. Weeds seed themselves inside stacks of tyres and begin to thrive in the warm, rubbery environment. These are just some of the phenomena addressed in Making Time. In this exhibition Carr posits art-making as merely one of the myriad ways bodies might interact with objects, just as there are many ways in which material transformations take place with or without human intervention.
Classical sculptural techniques of carving marble and casting in bronze and plaster are used to reproduce the forms of mundane and manufactured objects. These are then paired with carefully-placed supplements: living plants, pooling water, river rock, a glass sphere. Highly-specialised camera equipment is employed in order to capture the surprising intersection of a water-balloon bursting, then cascading over a sculptural assemblage of household objects, millisecond by millisecond.
Wresting with brute materials, whether monumental, preparatory, everyday or temporary, these sculptural investigations make manifest variations in speed and slowness, the kinetic and the still.
This will be Carr's 10th exhibition with Michael Lett gallery.
*Clarice Lispector, Água Viva, trans. Stefan Tobler, Cambridge, Massachusetts: New Directions, 1973/2012, p, 37.
Press release courtesy Michael Lett.
312 Karangahape Road
Newton
Auckland, 1010
New Zealand
www.michaellett.com
+64 9 309 7848
Wednesday – Friday
11am – 5pm
Saturday
11am – 3pm