Hybrid Series II
Packed Freedom
Portoro marble, limestone and orange strap
H 36cm x D 36cm x W 110cm;
UK 2024
Statement
As a sculptor, and as a human being, I believe we currently face a turning point in history. The logic of endless consumption and extraction as a means of sustaining our way of living and thinking is no longer viable. There is an urgent need to reconsider our collective relationship with the environment, with greater sensitivity and humility towards one another and the planet.
Drawing on my relationship with stone as the primary material of my sculpture along the years, I have increasingly felt the need to question the character and social status historically attributed to it. Stone has often been valued for its role in establishing and perpetuating power, authority and permanence.
From this position, I have more recently developed a new body of work that explores the symbolic and poetic potential of sculpture through the juxtaposition of materials and artefacts, ranging from finely carved forms to mass-produced readymade objects.
On one level, this series reflects on notions of value and use within classical extractive models; on another, it critically explores the capacity of sculpture to articulate how we, as a species, relate to our environment.
Packed Freedom
In a world governed by logistics, circulation and global exchange, freedom appears as a pre-assembled object, sealed, branded and ready for transit.
A whale-tail form, carved in black marble, is bound to a foam-like limestone base by a fluorescent orange strap.
The gesture is both reverent and absurd. Packaging becomes ritual, its straps and casings replacing belief, shaping a new civic duty: to remain intact, mobile and consumable. Freedom survives here not as an experience, but as freight.
