Abi Charlesworth’s sculptural practice is rooted in sensation. Allowing waves of personal narratives to echo over the viewer. Consumed in a mist of resonance where things begin to settle - there’s a slowness that builds. Encapsulating the viewer. Each object scribed in detail as conversations take place between sculptures and materials. 

 

Materials speak for her. They whisper words she cannot find. At any one time Charlesworth can look back at her work and see what she was feeling the weeks/ months around the making. The sculptures act as an archive of emotions, detailing through material form, colour and labour her intimate thoughts. 

 

The objects found, photographed, drawn and translated into sculpture find themselves removed and out of place. A mutation of the original solidified through her hand, as it finds its new reality. Situated in often artificial landscapes a narrative builds a conversation of a moment paused in time. Time is central to the sculptural installations understanding. Simultaneously pulling from the past and present as they occupy the idea of traces. Exploring the material edges of absence and hinting towards a possible future. 

 

There is a recent obsession with the idea of the relic, the idea of an objects survival and/ or discovery. In the wider installations Charlesworth is attempting to produce a sensation where the work can be felt beyond its physicality. The sculptures primarily combine ground steel, unglazed ceramics and cast fragments. The material is strictly itself with no masking, grounding the work in its own materiality.