SLUMP
Exhibition
Studio 13, Open School East, London. 2016
Exhibition
Studio 13, Open School East, London. 2016
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Theo Shields presents a collection of playful material murmurations in glass, steel and found drawings. By orchestrating collisions of matter, Theo manipulates form with heat, gravity and chance
to challenge the physicality of the ground beneath our feet. Emil Sheffman |
SLUMP. Catalogue essay
murmuration is described under ‘swarm behavior’ on wikipedia, though the phenomenon pertains specifically to starlings. the birds seen off the pier at aberystwyth offer enticing behavior, their murmurations expand and contract with playful fluidity, attracting spectators. how the birds lead and follow is a difficult question to answer, as form seems to be at once negotiated and enacted. a murmuration is sometimes orchestrated by a predator like a hawk, whose dips and dives shape the flock through it’s evasive maneuvers.
bored mechanics often change the shape of their waste. no wonder so many of them are sculptors - particularly the bike mechanics whose two-wheels routinely drive to the private views.
there’s a story about the british museum in a post-apocalyptic time. in this world, information technologies have collapsed, and the knowledge required to produce once-everyday objects is all but extinct. the learning of an earlier age has vanished, and with it the means for enacting a life off the land. there is only one handbook left in the anarchic flux, the big rooms of holborn stacked with the tools and handiwork of a pre-electrified age. the objects offer diagrams for improvised copies; flint knives out of television screens, ploughs from old radiators, and urns sculpted out of the remains of san pellegrino bottles.
dutch tears are formed by dripping molten glass into cold water. the glass cools into a tadpole-shaped droplet with a long, thin tail. it’s tough and the high levels of residual stress within the drop enables the bulbous end to be hit with a hammer without breaking, but if any section of the tail is even slightly damaged it causes the whole drop to violently explode.
By Emil Sheffman
murmuration is described under ‘swarm behavior’ on wikipedia, though the phenomenon pertains specifically to starlings. the birds seen off the pier at aberystwyth offer enticing behavior, their murmurations expand and contract with playful fluidity, attracting spectators. how the birds lead and follow is a difficult question to answer, as form seems to be at once negotiated and enacted. a murmuration is sometimes orchestrated by a predator like a hawk, whose dips and dives shape the flock through it’s evasive maneuvers.
bored mechanics often change the shape of their waste. no wonder so many of them are sculptors - particularly the bike mechanics whose two-wheels routinely drive to the private views.
there’s a story about the british museum in a post-apocalyptic time. in this world, information technologies have collapsed, and the knowledge required to produce once-everyday objects is all but extinct. the learning of an earlier age has vanished, and with it the means for enacting a life off the land. there is only one handbook left in the anarchic flux, the big rooms of holborn stacked with the tools and handiwork of a pre-electrified age. the objects offer diagrams for improvised copies; flint knives out of television screens, ploughs from old radiators, and urns sculpted out of the remains of san pellegrino bottles.
dutch tears are formed by dripping molten glass into cold water. the glass cools into a tadpole-shaped droplet with a long, thin tail. it’s tough and the high levels of residual stress within the drop enables the bulbous end to be hit with a hammer without breaking, but if any section of the tail is even slightly damaged it causes the whole drop to violently explode.
By Emil Sheffman