Carbon Based Forms
12 Perry Road, Bristol BS1 5BG
Tel: +44 (0)117 3771470 e-mail: [email protected]
www.cube-gallery.co.uk
“From this ever renewed Impurity of the air we come,
we animals and we plants, and we the human species,
with our 4 billion discordant opinions our millenniums
of history, our wars and shames, nobility and pride...
to carbon, the element of life.”
Rachael Nee RWA
Carbon Based Forms
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table
1. Bird pattern II (far right)
Smoke, graphite on board 106cm x 106cm
12 Perry Road, Bristol BS1 5BG
Tel: +44 (0)117 3771470 e-mail: [email protected]
www.cube-gallery.co.uk
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2. Grandstand
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 98cm x 132cm
Carbon Based Forms
Yves Klein called the flame ‘a living brush’. The sooty amorphous
carbon trace left from the flame of a candle is the material
Rachael Nee uses to make her smoke drawings.
These latest works have taken the element
of carbon itself as a starting point. Ninety
-five percent of everything that exists in
the universe is said to be carbon and it is
often called the backbone of life.
Form can also mean the shape of a person
or thing and Rachael uses the symbolic
and metaphorical meanings associated
with smoke and candles to evoke a person
or group of people.
Rachael saw a parallel between the long
series of processes a carbon atom goes
through and the long sequence of folds
taken by origami. With both carbon and
origami, complexity of form comes from
the simplicity of a small building block, an
atom or a fold, repeated and evolving to
create a vast number of different objects.
The ritual use of candles stretches through
many cultures and in her drawings she
uses them to express the ideas of memory,
absence, the passage of time and our
fragile and transient nature.
There are ambiguous crowd scenes that
suggest social human events in works like
‘Grandstand’ and smaller drawings that
focus on relationships such as ‘red-shift’
and ‘blue-shift’ where one couple draws
closer and the other apart.
This interest in the passage of time is
reinforced with the use of candles that
mark time passing. The fact that fire
creates an irreversible transformation
means there’s no going back; images
cannot be unburned.
A background in ceramics is no doubt
the reason why Rachael is drawn to using
fire as a creative tool. She works with
and enjoys the element of risk; total
concentration is needed to make her
drawings. But as you can imagine, as
in life, much does go up in smoke.
Rachael was elected an Academician
of the Royal West of England Academy
in 2007 and selected for the Jerwood
Drawing prize in 2005.
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3. Insect pattern II
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 106cm x 106cm
4. Insect pattern III
Smoke, graphite on board 96cm x 96cm
5. Bird pattern I
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 106cm x 106cm
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6. Shower
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 106cm x 106cm
7. Spell
Smoke, pencil on board 76cm x 106cm
8. The crowd demands a god
Smoke, graphite, pencil on board 57cm x 77cm
9. Span
Smoke, pencil on board 76cm x 106cm
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10. Trench
Smoke, graphite on board 98cm x 132cm
11. Mollusc pattern I
Smoke, graphite on board 96cm x 96cm
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12. Mollusc pattern II
Smoke, graphite on board 96cm x 96cm
13. Blueprint
Smoke, graphite, pencil on board 96” x 96”
14. Carbon star
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 106cm x 106cm
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15. Carbon based form I
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 86cm x 86cm
16. Carbon based form III
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 86cm x 86cm
17. Carbon based form II
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 86cm x 86cm
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18. Mammal pattern I
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 106cm x 106cm
19. Some
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 96cm x 96cm
20. Insect pattern I
Smoke, graphite, pastel on board 106cm x 106cm
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21. Blue shift
Smoke, graphite, pastel, wax on board 53cm x 53cm
21. Red shift
Smoke, graphite, pastel, wax on board 53cm x 53cm