Carla Lavin

Carla uses sculptural installation to explore our connection with the natural world around us. This is driven by a curiosity for production and reproduction, realised through experimentation with materials, process and form, to create sculptures which straddle the boundary between nature and the man-made. She uses organic materials as a media; predominantly clay, as whilst this process has connections to anthropomorphic evolution and primitive man, it remains inherent in our everyday lives.

Clay is very haptic and this malleability means that the hand and sense of touch is very apparent within the sculptures. As a sense which is becoming increasingly obsolete in a world of automated machines this is an attempt to recreate our ties with the natural world through using a media which evidences the human hand very clearly. The properties of the clay itself and natural elements dictate the form to some extent, creating ambiguous shapes; remnant of slumped/collapsed pots, and natural forms, which are also figurative and bodily. They remain unfired so that they have the potential to be reverted back into their original state; balanced and suspended to create, performative and theatrical crumbling clay installations, alluding to the birth and decay of civilisations.

The installation of work echoes the rawness of the process, and gives precedence to this method of making, as the materials are presented at various stages of their evolution, alluding to the passing of time. The clay is often combined with a contrasting element such as digital video and industrial metal components, and through these combinations the installation measures the period of human civilisation and cultural change, within the age of the Anthropocene.

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