A Stale Conversation Between Two Brothers
Installation, GSA Undergraduate Degree Show 2024
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A Stale Conversation Between Two Brothers is an installation exploring fabricated landscapes and the illusion of growth. Two hollow ceramic trees rise from cast iron grilles and rubble. The scene suggests an urban space designed to appear natural, but one that quietly resists change. The trees feel static, caught in a state of permanent pause.
The pigeons sit quietly among the rubble, blending into the trees. Their murky colour makes them feel ghostly, almost fading into the background. I’ve spent a long time thinking about pigeons, about how they personify us. How they move socially, how they survive in cities, how we mostly ignore them. They feel like a product of our excess.
This work also reflects my own numbness in the face of constant digital stimuli, an endless stream of notifications, recycled headlines, and horrific realities reduced to scrolling content. I think about the genocide I watch unfold from behind a screen, and the helplessness that follows. I find myself wanting to stop watching, to look away, but also not wanting to forget. The installation becomes a way to sit with that discomfort, to show a world that feels familiar but hollow. A space dressed as progress, where nothing is really changing. The emptiness in the work is deliberate. It points to the structure beneath, like a lie you can see straight through.
This work centres on surface, repetition and control. The cast iron tree grilles ground the installation, referencing the way urban environments manage and contain growth. Designed to restrict root systems, tree grilles act as quiet enforcers, holding nature in place under the appearance of care.
The ceramic trees are made from casts of real bark. I built moulds that picked up every detail, from the textures of the tree to the seams, fingerprints and tool marks left behind during making. creating a surface that shifts between organic and constructed.
The bench in the installation ties the work both to the gallery and to the park that inspired it. It invites viewers to sit, pause, and place themselves within the scene. By doing so, it softens the boundary between artwork and gallery space, making the installation feel less like something to observe and more like something to step into.
The glaze is a mix of iron oxide and rust, using particles collected from corroded metal found along the Glasgow canal. These fragments were ground and washed into the surface of the clay, producing a metallic, shifting finish that feels both industrial and mineral. The use of waste material ties the work to its surroundings. not only just visually, but physically, through the texture and chemistry of the glaze.