From Rebecca Gallo…
There is a sense of a scaled-down enormity in the collection of sculptural objects that make up Lisa Sammut’s every now and then. Circular, hill-like, triangular and irregular forms hewn from wood are overlaid with prints, paint and lacquer. Some contain moving parts that tick, rotate or illuminate, and the whole set fits into Firstdraft’s smallest gallery where the speckled linoleum takes on a galactic aspect. Sammut’s objects read as maquettes for a constellation, or as a collection of stylised asteroids.
Human-centric scales of space and time do not equip us to think about the lifespan of Earth and other celestial bodies, but when we try to think in geological or astronomical time, we are always translating from a human standpoint. We turn the dioramic into the panoramic. Sammut takes the clichéd phrase ‘every now and then’ to mean literally every now and every then, as she states, it ‘…began with the romantic notion that all of natural and cultural history is an epic panorama, embracing the present, past and future.’ In a small print-run catalogue, Sammut includes a simple text that describes a single day of eternity: the time for an immense rock to be worn away by the beak of a small bird that visits every thousand years. This vignette reflects the scale of Sammut’s work, where the unimaginably grand is best conveyed through the small and poetic.
Until September 25
Firstdraft, Woolloomooloo
Pic: Lisa Sammut, every now and then (detail), 2015, woodwork and mixed media, dimensions variable.
