Joe Sheehan, ST-09, 2023. Argillite (Colac Bay), 5 x 25 x 8cm. Courtesy: the artist and Tim Melville Gallery, Auckland.

Joe Sheehan’s most recent body of work, installed directly onto the gallery floor, is a series of nearly 50 carved stone sculptural vessels; flagons, canisters and bottles.

Angular cuts through the stone determine the angle at which the shapes sit on the floor where, lopsided and bobbing about, they evoke the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

They are, in the words of artist/poet Greg O’Brien, “the kind of mass-produced items once described as ‘disposable’ before we realised it was never that simple, [reminding us] that the paraphernalia of our ordinary lives – the Tupperware and the screw-top – will in time become the fossils of the present age.”

Opening Event: Wednesday 6 December, 6-8pm

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