Graduate Show Overview
The Human Construct project is rooted in the contrast between unyielding, angular, human constructions, and the subtle yet inevitable course of time and nature.
Throughout his final year, Andrew studied ruins in order to build an understanding of the motifs that characterise architectural degradation and decay, and the concept of self-destruction through abandonment. This started as in interest in history and loss, but developed into a much more personal theme as focus shifted away from the splendour of grand mansions and castles, and towards a practice that acknowledges the personal tensions between artmaking and domestic settings.
The centrepiece of this project was the construction of 200 modular foam cubes which each imitate concrete building blocks. Being able to combine these individual sculptures to build, evaluate, and then deconstruct a multitude of different temporary structures allowed for experimentation and reflection before committing to a more permanent sculpture. There has been an element of impermanence and transience in this practice, as for the most part, the primary identity and form of Andrew’s artwork has been as a jumbled heap of component parts.
For the Graduate Show, the collection of blocks have been assembled into a portrait. As well as providing the opportunity to return to a more gestural technique, this allowed Andrew to construct more expressive and figurative work, and push his expectations of making natural forms from a toolkit of synthetic and angular parts.
At over five feet tall, the sculpture requires exploration at different scales, with a silhouette resembling a fragmented face, but a surface texture more reminiscent of a cityscape or architectural construct.
