The crystallisation of the forest was now almost complete. The prismatic surface extended away in a wide bend, its light obliterating the few landmarks that otherwise might have been recognised. J.G. Ballard, ‘The Crystal World’
The unknown, the familiar and an awareness of the space in between generates the idea of an alternate, an area or territory in which reality materialised in one form reveals itself on closer examination as something undefined, mysterious and other.
The work of Asaki Kan, Katherine Lubar, Nick Dawes, Jo Marshall, Andy Harper, Shane Bradford, Ivan Benitez and Sarah Mizer locates itself somewhere within this shifting duality. Using specific strategies and media to articulate content, the works re-orientate and question the standard models of representation, finding their own language through dislocation, abstraction, repetition and displacement.
In J.G. Ballard’s novel ‘The Crystal World’ the West African jungle starts to crystalize through a ‘ leaking of time.’ The works in this exhibition manifest and present a parallel engagement with this transformation, not only echoing the physical processes described in the book, but simultaneously connecting to the world we live in, a reality suspended between the binaries of order and chance, increasingly characterised by continual transition, instability and flux.
