Distillation of Matter

2017, site-specific installation at Artspace Sydney (2017 Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship), hand-crushed ferrite magnets, rare earth magnets, linen thread, steel.
Installation Assistant: Dylan Batty. Video credit: Tom Compagnoni. Photography credit: Zan Wimberley.

Distillation of Matter is a site-specific installation that was presented at Artspace, Sydney, in 2017 for the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship. The work engages with the magnetic potential and latent energies of the building’s architecture, activating the building’s structural steel plates as magnetic anchor points from which a network of lines is drawn through space. Using linen thread, rare earth magnets and crushed ferrite, these lines converge toward a central suspended form.

Hovering just above eye height, the orb is composed of hand-crushed ferrite magnets. The material is produced by breaking ceramic magnets with a mortar and pestle, transforming these industrial objects into a granular, earthy substance. Suspended under tension by magnets and thread, the form is held in place by forces that are both visible and unseen.

The work explores the relationship between material and force, drawing on magnetism and gravity as structuring conditions. The converging lines and compressed central mass allude to a point of extreme density—a speculative singularity—where the crushed matter of a collapsed star is drawn inward, approaching an infinitesimal point of infinite density.