Represented artist:
Elaine Mullings
About the artworks:
Roost - to rest, to settle down or sleep. These artworks reference Haga Nova as a place to come home to, to live and to rest. As the notion of roosting is so strongly associated with birds, each sculpture has a distinct character distinguished by the material forms of abstract birds and their colours.
Each sculpture made up of two large off-set, connected copper circles act as perches for the flocks of coloured forms. These were individually hand-crafted in a range of materials including glazed porcelain, polymer resins and powder-coated aluminium. Their bold colours were inspired by the plumages of exotic birds and the angular forms offer a textural contrast alongside the smooth curves and warm tones of the copper rings. The palettes and materials bring particular qualities to each form and create individual sculptures that are designed to animate the entrance spaces.
About the artist:
Loss and fragility are recurring themes in Elaine Mullings’ multidisciplinary practice. The often-formal nature of her sculpture and installations reflects an interest in architectural spaces while the varied cast of materials she uses are designed to unravel the emotional and cultural values woven into "things". Assembling and manipulating familiar objects and materials, Mullings wants to look beyond simple metaphor and sentiment to question perceptions of objects and materials that linger in the background of our everyday lives.
Working with anything from tissue paper and plastic bags to copper pipe and broken glass – delicate or fragile "things" that hover like residual low level noise - she interrogates the emotions and sensations that seemingly low value, ephemeral material can provoke.
Mullings uses these "things" divorced from their original contexts, to deal with difficult subjects such as exploitation, loss, prejudice and injustice. The aim is to unsettle our understanding of the familiar and our response to the "strange". Attracted by their disposable or transient nature, Mullings tugs at the shifting values we assign to materials to reveal the poetics of very simple things.
Projektnamn: Haga Nova - Einar Mattsson