Outgrowths

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.