Cassandra Hard Lawrie

Distillation
cardboard, paverpol, resin, pigment 1440 x 880 x 880mm
Undercliff Winery, Wollombi 2007
sponsored by Paverpol Australia
‘Distillation’ is a name for one of the secret stages of the Alchemic process. The vessel like shape of this sculpture is drawn from references to apparatus used by alchemists and ‘puffers’. Although uninformed as to the exact use of such apparatus, due to the hermetic nature of alchemy Cassandra retrieves this obscure and enigmatic image from the past, and ‘re-embodyies’ it into a naïve sculptural image—a displaced semantic image—opening up questions on the transient nature of meaning and further the nature of ‘belief’.

In this work the ‘esoteric’ symbolises the opposition of insider/outsider and familiar and unfamiliar. The uninformed viewer is ‘outside’ the secret coding of the esoteric image, yet as a historic referent it is familiar at a deeper level of the psyche. The possibility of familiarity with historical knowledge at a ‘deeper’ level discords with one’s life-acquired knowledge. Cassandra is interested in the nature of contemporary transience due to technology and multi-culturalism and the subsequent shifting nature of belief and meaning.

Cassandra is sponsored by Paverpol Australia. An excellent fabric hardener that dries fast creating a UV and water resistant bond. It can be used on any natural material such as silk, soft leather, self-hardening clay, cardboard, polystyrene foam, wood, plaster, ceramic and more. It adheres to almost anything except plastic and is perfect for a number of contemporary sculptural applications.

Cassandra Hard Lawrie

Cassandra Hard Lawrie
Nature and her Ape, Art
llaminated cardboard, wood, wrapertoire, 230 x 100 x 100cm
courtesy of Robin Gibson Gallery

My practice as an artist encompasses the disciplines of sculpture, drawing and computer generated imagery. As a sculptor I am focussed on methodologies that are informed by woodworking and boat building. Conceptually, I am attracted to subjects that reflect the invisible and other-worldliness. I mean this in a philosophic and academic sense.

Origins (4), 2006
timber, MDF, resin, paper mache, pigment and found objects
500 x 500 x 500 mm

“The invisible is spatially distant, not only beyond the horizon but also very high or very low. It is also temporally distant, either in the past or in the future. In addition, it is beyond all physical space and every expanse or else in a space structured totally differently. It is situated in a time of its own, or outside any passing of time, in eternity itself. It can sometimes have a corporeity or materiality other than that of the elements of the visible world, and sometimes be a sort of pure anti–materiality. At times it will be an autonomy vis-à-vis certain or even all the restrictions placed on the visible world, at others it will be an obeying of laws different to our own. Even so, these are, of course, merely empty compartments capable of containing the most diverse of beings, from ancestors and gods to the dead and to people different to ourselves, as wells as events and circumstances.” Krystof Pomia

Cultural and Social frameworks, History, Philosophy and Psychology are the background themes of my art practice. For me, they represent the invisible in the sense they may be non-tempocentric or defiant of singular interpretation. They all exist beyond material reality. I have often chosen to produce sculptural objects that aim to appear as fake artefacts or theatre props rather than an art object. I see the Museum and the Theatre as compelling messengers of history, sociology and psychology—and the artefact and the prop as signals from the messenger.