building mass with a grain of sand, 2023

Building Mass with a Grain of Sand, 2023

Project shown at J-Spot

Toronto, ON

Extract and refine. Form and transform. Everything comes from many parts of another. It just needs the ingredients, opportunity and time for a process to take place.

Building Mass from a Grain of Sand explores the realm of resources, plotting along a spectrum of tiny or vast, individual versus collective, and abundant versus scarce. Connecting these diverse ideas of resources, whether Natural material from the Earth or the labour and skill of us as people, there are references to measuring, extracting and industry.

Luxurious raw materials like reclaimed brass and bronze sheets are combined with the more banal sand and found stones and displayed on broken granite slab fragments collected from Toronto's "Leslie Spit". The materials are contextually reorganized between urban, industrial and residential uses; their value and importance interrogated. For example, sand and pebbles being key ingredients in concrete are extremely important yet unsung resources for building the modern urban environment.

Resources are a critical point of tension in human interaction with our planet and geopolitics. They can shape and sustain whole communities but also lead to their destruction.

Building Mass with a Grain of Sand, 2023

Project shown at J-Spot

Toronto, ON