Cast

CASTING

Bones found on a hillside, bronze cast in a furnace. The process a revelation:

CAST CAST

Silicone mould…wax. Cups, runners and risers (bronze in, air out)

Ceramic shell times 6…..wax burnt out….ammonia dries

Fire bonds ceramic shell…

Hot hot hot bronze into hot hot shell…

Knock off shell, cut off the pieces and CHASE. CHASE.

Patinate

with ferric nitrate

not French skates…..

A lot of little bones and a few flints…CAST CAST

Photograph and THROW THROW

THROW AT THE DRUM

CAST AND MAKE NOISE…

Record…..

The effect was pleasingly complex, still in line with the research. It connected human and animal, along with metal as from Thor’s forge inside the mountain. Each bronze bone can be seen for what it is but still they bring to mind Timothy Morton’s hyperobjects just because they seem uncanny.

We start with metal, ready-made, and rusted as Richard Serra or Robert Smithson would admire. The viewer suspects there's an oil drum, empty by the sound of it, with all the significance of the last almost two hundred years. And now Covid-19 has brought us a touch wood hope that the fall in oil prices will somehow engineer some massive change. Add to the action a human trying their luck with some small objects, now transformed by fire. The living entity of sound brings to mind the anvil in the forge of Thor, with a dulling too from the wooden floor. It lands, transforms and gradually fades. And indeed we need all the luck we can engineer. Is this the moment?

Animal, vegetable or mineral?

Are these some hyper objects , some bits of human or animal, or some uncanny elements which should be sticking all over some body, in Morton's image? Are they shells or dice or jewellery or were they something else stolen from sheepish owners?

The more we know about the climate emergency the more we realise how all-pervasive it is. We even struggle to remember it sometimes. But yes, Timothy Morton is at home in feeling not at home, unheimlich. All those years ago Andrea Dworkin pointed out that sexism is like gravity….you don’t even notice its there. Much in common then.

Fulani jewellery from Nigeria

Angela Cockayne Surf and Turf.

Richard Serra. Intersection