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Copyright: © Roger Hiorns | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Curator: Here we have an untitled work by Roger Hiorns, a contemporary British artist born in 1975, part of the Tate Collection. Editor: It strikes me as a strange sort of hybrid form, classical ornamentation fused with something decidedly more...industrial, maybe even intestinal? Curator: Precisely. Hiorns often combines found objects in unexpected ways. His work explores themes of transformation, entropy, and the tension between the organic and the manufactured. Editor: The contrast is jarring, that ornate base topped by something so plain, almost sterile. It calls to mind ancient rituals combined with modern unease. Curator: He seeks to destabilize conventional notions of beauty and value, challenging the traditional hierarchies of the art world. Editor: A strange relic for our times, isn’t it? A comment on our ever changing values? Curator: It certainly invites contemplation on how cultural artifacts gain significance and how that significance shifts over time.
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tate 5 months ago
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Untitled is one of a series of six untitled, hollow ceramic vessels collectively known as Beachy Head (Tate T12457–T12462). These works are designed to be suspended from the ceiling with stainless steel wire and filled with soap detergent. The ceramic vessel that constitutes the body of Untitled is a configuration of three decorative forms: a disc-shape at the bottom, a wider, more curvaceous centre, and a ribbed neck at the top. The ceramic is grey in colour and covered in a mottled glaze that resembles lava due to the cracked and bubbled surface. From the centre of its base runs a transparent silicon hose which is connected to an air compressor that feeds oxygen into the vessel. When the air compressor is switched on, the oxygen mixes with the soap detergent to produce frothy white foam that exudes out of the vessel’s spout. This column of foam, which maintains the cylindrical form of the inside of the vessel, grows steadily upwards until it can no longer support itself. The foam bends and flops flaccidly around the vessel before oozing on to the floor below, leaving a sticky entropic residue. The device continues to produce the foamy precipitate until the emission is entirely dispersed.
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