Crystals & Metal: Amethyst

The videos from the series 'Crystals & Metal' are made using footage of sculptural representations of basic earth minerals. These sculptures, created from synthetic substances like plastic packaging and acrylic paint, exist only on video, never to be exhibited in their material form. In 'Crystals & Metal', the art object is both made immaterial and transported back to its ritual origin and the foundation of material value in earth materials.

Half a century after the ‘dematerialisation’ of the art object, hastened by the rise of conceptual and post-studio practices, the immaterial has begun to enter everyday life as much that was once matter is translated into digital data. 'Crystals & Metal' responds to our changing and ambiguous relationship with materiality and representation; the videos not only take on the relationship between material and image, but the attendant dichotomy between organisation and chaos. The visual presence of both structure and imperfection in the minerals and metals is mirrored in the soundtrack, which presents a 'metal' of a different kind, but which also combines repetitive structure with deviation from it. Each loop is 30 seconds long, the average length of time a viewer looks at an artwork. There is no narrative structure, allowing the viewer to drop in and out at any point, as though observing a sculpture.