Angeni's Work
"Landscape, ecologies, time and the human impact on the planet are principal concerns in my art practice. The restless landscapes of Iceland inspired current work: from the slow drifting of the tectonic plates to the anticipation of geysir eruptions; to the emergent textured surfaces formed as lava flows, cools down and solidifies, strewn with rocks hurled from deep within the earth. Glacial landscapes receding at an alarming rate due to climate change; ice fragments scattered over volcanic sand beaches. These spirited landscapes feel raw and unpredictable; walking on their surfaces feels unstable.
In response to this evocative material environment, I created lively experiments and unpredictable outcomes with materials, surfaces and movement. Unique forms emerged in glass, bronze and clay through processes of heating, cooling, fusion and chemical reactions. The creative tension between solidity, instability and movement was embodied in Imperceptible Motion, in which a solid installation breaks apart and drifts across the floor. Glacial Drift and Pyroclast I were vertical and “off-balanced” iterations of this idea in response to different sites. In Irrepairable, an immersive live walking performance, the audience created the work by walking over and cracking the clay surface “alive” beneath their feet, amplified by a speaker. Metaphorically referencing the human impact on the planet’s surface.
The degree show installation Óstöðvandi Orku draws the audience into the textures and visual detail of a landscape brought in from the outside, out-of-place: to a rockscape holding deep time memory, with glints of glass hinting at fragments remaining from a liquid state. It evokes the creative tension, anticipation and displacement, that sense of otherworldliness, I felt in the lava fields of Iceland. An invitation to be transported somewhere else. Whilst sculpting the rock and glass forms and textures embodying my feelings in this sublime, inhospitable - for humans - environment created by forces of nature, they also seemed to manifest landscapes altered by humans; ecological ruins: oil spill-scapes, nuclear accident-scapes, deadly for all life on the planet, an uncertain future."
