Void Fraction at CARN
In Autumn 2022, we brought our experiments and conversations into a gallery space to create:
Void Fraction at Oriel CARN in Caernarfon, Wales
08/10/22 - 20/11/22
As one possible creative response to our experience with the material, we created an immersive installation and a series of sculptures.
The exhibition presents creations made from quarried limestone offcuts, interspersed around limestone powder formations, in a variety of different physical states, both drying and taking on moisture throughout the exhibition period.
Echoes of the quarry saw, cut across the gallery floor, criss crossing wall to wall via graphite, column, light and shadow. The sound of the blade cutting through limestone blocks was an integral part to the artists’ visits to Aber Quarry.
The constant flow of water across the blade runs off into a pool, taking with it the limestone powder, drying slowly, compressing under its own weight.
Visitors enter an other-worldly landscape, entangling themselves in the dialogue between the artists and the materials and space, as the conversation branches ever outwards.
“Solid stone becomes aqueous and flows down a gentle slope,
pooling in a shape determined by the landscape.
Simultaneously, the liquid evaporates and sinks into the earth,
shrinking and cracking as it solidifies.
Soft to the touch.
Unable to hold undistributed weight.
Malleable. Spreadable. Smooth.
Sculptable as porcelain.
Solids piled high.
Temporal structures.
Compressed and solid, yet surprisingly vulnerable to water, from which it came.
Contemporary formations.”
Rock → Cut → Ingress
Quarried limestone offcuts,
the useful pieces cut and sold,
reveal their sheer faces,
a window to another world.
“We’ve dug, sifted, filled, replicated, excavated, measured, cast, eroded, displaced, dehydrated and dissolved this mysterious, yet ubiquitous substance. Our experiments have created more questions than answers, there is much still to explore.”
Limestone is the material of choice for many iconic structures - the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Istanbul city walls and Caernarfon Castle. Anglesey limestone is a hard, carboniferous rock, 300 million years old and full of fossils, shells of millions of sea creatures, compressed and heated over time. Jolted from its bedrock home, this limestone is cut and shaped, formed into blocks.
Rock fragments and powder piles up, layered with leaves, soil, bits of human rubbish and forgotten things.
Compression.
Time.
The cycle begins again.
What will this rock be called in the future?
