aluminium, steel, iron oxide pigment, 3D print, 1940s archival advertisements.
Figuring the oval shape, often seen in emblems or lockets in family heirlooms, ‘lustre’ evokes the possibility of metal as precious, beyond its economic value. The framing of photographs, objects and jewellery in ovals produces a portal affect, an urge to preserve a memory that is otherwise rendered intangible over time. The oval is also a frame for vision, a way of tending to what is left out of the image—pushed to the peripheral space by the frame itself. Each oval in ’lustre’ together forms an umbilical cord-supply chain, mustering the steps in the long journey our resources take from extraction in mines to point of sale as commodities.
The extraction of aluminium is entwined in the dark shadow histories of British and Dutch empire, where due to the construction of bombs and airplanes in WWII, new mines were opened in Guinea and Suriname. With the advent of increasing renewable energy production, in solar parks and wind farms, the demand for aluminium is growing. Aluminium forms the casing, or shells for these infrastructures; a frame to hold silicone solar cells.
Bauxite undergoes a five step process to become aluminium, where toxic red iron waste is extruded from the metal, making it more lightweight. This sculptural and archive project is a practice in attempting to re-attune to the journey of aluminium, from bauxite to roofing sheet metal, weapons industry and the Celosia plants that grow in red mud. It enquires into how aluminium’s material properties, of excess waste, lightness and highly energy consumptive processes enact the psychic superiority of whiteness. To image the geologists draw to ‘lustre’, the light that emits from minerals, is to see the risk in desire, from marvelling at the shimmer affect of materiality, to the urge to possess, extract, consume.
