Ngutu Kākā Gallery

Shelley Simpson: Stonesense

Shelley Simpson

26 July 2024 - 16 August 2024

Gallery Two

Shelley Simpson

_{Image: Shelley Simpson, Vessel, 2024 (detail), courtesy of the artist.}

In Stonesense, Shelley Simpson offers paradoxically intimate encounters with materials not typically associated with the body. Hand moulded objects are cast in iron to reenact the act of touching. A live electroforming processes takes place in situ, while solid lumps of slag, the byproduct of iron making, anchor metal plates and prop the door open. Alongside these sculptural experiments, Simpson presents microscopic views of iron as prints and video, revealing a strikingly organic world that sits beneath the threshold of attention.

Stonesense, Simpson's PhD exhibition, builds on her research into how such encounters can emphasise cellular and mineral connections between our human bodies and the material world. For Simpson: ‘We are all mineral beings. Bodies, whether animal, plant or lithic, enfold within them minerals such as iron...minerals that cross the binary of the living and the non-living, loosening the categories that separate entities in the world.'

Shelley Simpson _{Installation view: Stonesense, 26 Jul - 16 Aug 2024. Photo: Emily Parr}