Lucy Andrews makes objects and installations which explore the flow of matter through natural and human-made systems. Her new exhibition at LSC involves disembodied tree parts, corroded metals and melted plastics. These elements create a disharmonious ecosystem in which the grown and the made, the living and the dead coalesce into semi-solid, oozing formations. The artist proposes an ambiguous materiality, changing the structure of manufactured components that seem to decay or revert back to their 'raw' state. Meanwhile, the form of the burr (a bulbous tree growth which develops around damaged plant matter like a scar) appears in various iterations, disturbing the infrastructure of the gallery space.
The word ‘outgrowth’ not only refers to a material excess but also to a causal relationship - the consequences of an action. In this exhibition, the artist wanted to use the three spaces of the gallery very deliberately to create a trajectory through time and through different states of matter. Within this progression, human and plant based materials are shown to contaminate each other and mutate into new forms, blurring the point at which a thing becomes 'unnatural'.
Exhibition curated by Séan O'Reilly.
Lucy Andrews
Lucy Andrews was born in Stoke-on-Trent, U.K. in 1978 and studied Sculpture and Art History at NCAD, Dublin. In 2016 she completed a Masters in Fine Art at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. She has exhibited extensively within Ireland at Project Arts Centre, IMMA, Rua Red, Limerick City Gallery and Taylor Gallery, and also at Le Plafond, Amsterdam and 1646, The Hague. In 2018 she attended the residency programme of the Bemis Centre for Contemporary Arts, USA. She has received various awards including the Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Graduate Award (2012) the Dublin City Council Arts Bursary (2014), and the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary (2018).