Phase Shift, Shades of Dawn
Natalie Hunter
Phase Shift, Shades of Dawn
Arcs 01, 02, 03
2022 | 2026
Hand shaped and curved birch, hand cut and mounted glass, colour film, light.
3 wall mounted sculptures
The glass and wood sculptures in Phase Shift, Shades of Dawn draw on my interest in photography and the material aspects of making. They recall sensory memories of light and the shifting experiences of colour across a sunlit dawn. Made from hand shaped wood and glass, I exploit the properties of my process and materials by bending and shaping them in ways that speak to slow looking and the passage of time. Glass and wood are rigid materials, but wood can bend before it breaks. Glass plays a major role in the shaping of time and light in photography to produce images. It is malleable in its liquid form, yet brittle as a solid while remaining highly reflective and integral to the optics of photography. Combined together I use these materials and their unique properties to speak about the nature of time through the bending and shaping of images and materials in space. Hovering between stillness and motion, a viewer’s engagement with the work requires active movement by the viewer to experience the sculptures in the round. Phase Shift, Shades of Dawn appears different when standing at different points in the room. Activated by light, the arcs of the sculptures produce latent images and reflections on the walls they occupy. Referencing the many hues of the sky as it changes through dawn, I challenge the idea of sculpture and the image as static frozen moments. Instead I considers wood and glass as fluid and malleable materials that become poetic encounters and reflections on a mutable changing sky.