Natural Resource

“Neon dust fell from the black night skies. 

First-hand accounts of the Sighting describe the specks to be immensely vibrant, like fireflies softly falling to the earth. Bright. As if a single firefly was glowing for a hundred. Falsely tangible, for when reaching to touch, they passed through our human flesh as if we weren’t there.

Like atoms that have grown, expanded into our visible world. 

Most are still sceptical if it even happened… 

 

…until today’s discovery. 

 

By the river, not far from the Sightings, a glowing form emerges from the Earth. It’s growing slowly, pulsing… it’s alive. It thickens and branches like a coral or fungi, but it appears to consume the compounds of plastic like we repurpose organic matter into our forms. 

 

…Is this the answer to our plague of plastic?

…Is it conscious?”

…Was this decrepit shovel purposefully chosen?

 

With this work, Rhys builds upon a fantasy concept that currently consumes his thoughts - of an alien consciousness landing on Earth. With each sculpture and concept, the story unfolds. 

The sculpture features a shovel found by the Werribee River, that almost completely blended into the rocks and rubble, decomposing, unseen. He contrasts this with plastic litter (in the prior form of tree collars and trimmer line) easily found in its stark form, a challenging material to return to the Earth. This was cleaned, heated and reformed, and paired with 150 individually programmed LEDs to create the encroaching form propping up the shovel before you.