2019

The complex forms present in the Dimmuborgir lava field, North Iceland, provided a starting point of a material practice that embraced short expressions of violence as a method of creative formation. Using glass as the primary material enhanced the intensity of the process, since the glass was quick to harden in the studio air and prone to shatter if gestures were misjudged. To create echoes of the Dimmuborgir forms, I needed to work quickly and aggressively, engaging with the material akin to a process of attack. The objects themselves have an uneasy history, containing physical expressions that are discomforting -- formed through gestures such as cutting, pulling, hitting and stabbing. The emotive elements of these human gestures are starkly contrasted to the impersonal and objective volatility inherent in the formation of Dimmuborgir, calling in to question where humans personify and apply pathetic fallacy to the natural world and where theories of post-humanism can be sensitively explored through sculptural processes.

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The title of this piece comes from the English translation of Dimmuborgir -- 'dark castles', but is also translated as 'dark cities' and 'black fortress'.