Emma Woffenden

Value? Crystal in Cardboard Box.

Crystal in Cardboard Box. 2001. Sculptural object. 20×40×30cm cardboard, glass.

Whilst making this piece I thought about the values of materials and the perceived values, about fragility, permanence and impermanence, warmth and cold, use and non-use, the real monetary cost, the perceived liveliness and deadness of different materials. Others thought of making sweets as a child, pouring hot sugar into boxes and of frosted mornings— a sort of memory trigger.

Inside this worn, much handled and shipped box there is crystal, optical crystal, I think I remember the code LF5 from Schott, not the glass everywhere, like windows or screens. When I began working with glass, and historically, crystal had to have 24% lead in order to call it that, it was softer to cut— now lead is banned.

To get it lying there like a glove matching the textures and layers, involved making a mould, from cardboard to dental alginate, then an investment mould made from ground quartz, gypsum, china clay, water, and then the glass is slowly melted inside the mould. Value or cost in labour, time, technical knowledge, manual skill, electricity, materials, studio rent, memories and finally a value in the gallery. The box and crystal now have the same status.

Catherine Radosa

All the values will not make the future.

Photography, 9/2024, parc IOR, Bucarest.

One should be able to photograph the smell of this place. A park that has become a crime
scene, the scene of multiple murders. When will the trial take place? Who will represent the
victims? Poisoned trees, burnt greenery, animal habitats reduced to ashes… Speculation,
concreting, making a profit, in one of Europe’s least breathable cities.
I met there Andreea. She told me how she fights, with dance, with words, with others.
May clovers soon grow on this soil, may bare feet caress them… Parc IOR»»

Kasia Ozga

Asheville, NC

Kasia Ozga, Wilma Dykeman Greenway, Asheville, North Carolina, 2023

I took this photo in Asheville, North Carolina 10 months ago. 2 days ago, Hurricane Helene covered the River Arts District in rain and loss as flood waters swept through low-lying areas of the mountain town. I don’t know if the sign (or the bridge) is still standing.

Ruth Maclennan

‘The future of humanity’

‘The future of humanity’, Bucharest, September 2024

The sculpture, ‘Wings’, commemorates those who died in the anti-Communist resistance in Romania and Bessarabia between 1945 and 1989. It replaces a statue of Lenin. The ‘House of the Free Press’ was the former headquarters of ‘The Spark’ newspaper. This ideological soup of rehashed symbols and random vehicles, cosmic idols and exhaust fumes clogs the senses.

Manuela Morgaine

Holy Crown

 
Tamar was Queen of Georgia from 1184 to 1213. She is considered to be one of the finest monarchs of medieval Georgia, and the first female monarch. When I saw this icon of her inside Svétiskhovéli Cathedral, I thought that it was the first crowned icon ever seen, and that from the heights of Tbilisi, Tamar, like a Holy Crown, was watching over us all.
 
Mtskheta, Georgia, 28 september 2024.
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