mark wotherspoon

Mark Wotherspoon is a glass sculptor based in Sydney's Inner West. He was the initiator and president of ESProjects (and ESP gallery) from 2009 to December 2010, an artist run initiative (ARI) in Marrickville.

Wotherspoon employs crystal alongside techniques that re-work found glass objects, to illuminate the contemporary human condition within the urban environment; a moment that is at once chaotic, disorientating and overloaded with social-connections, and in turn breeds isolation, introspection and cultural homogeny.

Glass artist Mark Wotherspoon’s solo show If Stones Could Dream (5–22 May 2011) at ESP Gallery brings together a series of dynamic raw and polished sculptural works that draw upon our collective and individual experiences of contemporary society. Themes such as loneliness, mass-consumption, idolization and personal choice, are evocatively imagined in glass cast from both coloured lead crystal and the melted screens of discarded television sets, a method the artist adopted in 2005.  Subsequently, Wotherspoon’s glass sculptures exist between the figurative and the conceptual – as contemporary issues are imbedded within the thematic thread of the works and the materiality of the object.

In Wotherspoon’s new sculptural work Idol (2011), a group of figures clamour, creep and follow their icon, their gestures giving visibility to the conditioning effect the media has on our actions and social patterns. The physicality and materiality of the work, draws our attention to the obscenity and emptiness of this phenomenon – as society’s desires are cast in glass in an unnerving and pointed display. Conversely, while the figures in Idol bare a resemblance, their individual faces remind us of the importance of our own individuality amidst these growing trends. Repetition, as a metaphor for society and cultural homogeny, is also employed in the work.

Overall, Wotherspoon hopes that his sculptures remain open to interpretation, enabling the viewer to complete the exhibition’s narratives via connections with their own internal associations and personal memories.

Wotherspoon's art practices brings our awareness not only to a shift in how we might experience the world, but also processes of looking and thinking and how these might also be changing, from solid and certain to unsure, scattered and confused. Repetition is used to detail these conflicting realities – generic patterns of behaviour, the multiplicity and the chaotic. The objects offer us clues, although never allow a definitive answer; like contemporary life, there are many choices and paths we can take in finding and making our own conclusions.

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www.esprojects.com.au

ESProjects launched on 26th September, 2009. For more information on openings and happeinings in the inner-west, check the website.

ESP is an artist run initiative, run by volunteers.

key words: Contemporary cast glass, Mark Wotherspoon, blown glass, Sculpture, Surrealism, surrealist, recycled, recycling, existentialist

• Conceptual
• Craft and object
• Design
• 3 D (sculpture/installation/public art)