Operating within a formalist tradition, Sue Paterson’s ‘Eighty Hours’ concentrates on elements of form, surface, and light, while acknowledging the vibrant agency contained within materials.

 

In isolation, these materials are often inconspicuous and unremarkable. However, when the emphasis of an object or material is changed, we are invited to reconsider. Such emphasis provides an opportunity to contemplate and reinterpret the materials, and to reflect on their associated relationships and tensions.

‘Eighty Hours’ focuses on those quieter moments when materials intersect. On the formation of new relationships that exhibit the unique properties of each material. Here, it is the agency of the polished copper which asserts itself. Left untouched, copper can be quite unremarkable, however, with concentrated manual polishing, the material’s voice is activated and given the power to seduce us, to draw us in and to hold our attention so that we may hear its hail.