Glass, water, eco resin, wool, aluminium, stainless steel, PVC tubing, water tank and pump.
120 x 80 x 65 cm
2025
£4,400
€5,100
Enquire here
These recent works are Oates’ response to an ongoing body of research into permafrost whereby she positions the metabolisms of thawing ice in dialogue with notions of time, observation and structures of knowledge. The sculptures offer a lens through which to view what is percolating under the ground.
In Future Obscura Oates looks to the development of borosilicate glass for laboratory apparatus, a material central to our learning about chemical and material processes. Glass lab-ware enabled isolating and distilling of subjects of inquiry and, while lenses extended our vision to more-than-human scales. Yet observation itself alters the observed - most famously articulated in the double slit experiment of quantum physics - and a similar paradox emerges when a borehole is drilled to monitor the rate of ice melt in permafrost regions. The gesture at once brings both clarity and chaos. Like the transmutations of ice and water of the permafrost, glass too is never fully stable but rather an ‘amorphous solid’, a future obscura.
Here, Oates employs borosilicate glass to hold distorting views. Water flowing through the horizontal planes of the sculpture activates the system further, while its rigid-seeming frame evokes the familiar pillars of scientific knowledge. Yet the structure’s removable connectors theoretically allow continual reconfiguration, mirroring the shifting grounds of hypothesis, instrument sensitivity, and ways of seeing, with “sensing whiskers” and surveying crosshairs extending this dialogue by recalling the tools of experimentation devised for these fragile environments.
The works exist in a continual state of becoming, as if sensing themselves, the shifting of water, the breath of vapour, a consequence of the interplay of underlying, dynamic processes. They guide our gaze across their surfaces, carrying us through uncertainty. Control, we come to realise, was never ours to hold.
Glass, water, eco resin, wool, aluminium, stainless steel, PVC tubing, water tank and pump.
120 x 80 x 65 cm
2025
£4,400
€5,100
Enquire here
These recent works are Oates’ response to an ongoing body of research into permafrost whereby she positions the metabolisms of thawing ice in dialogue with notions of time, observation and structures of knowledge. The sculptures offer a lens through which to view what is percolating under the ground.
In Future Obscura Oates looks to the development of borosilicate glass for laboratory apparatus, a material central to our learning about chemical and material processes. Glass lab-ware enabled isolating and distilling of subjects of inquiry and, while lenses extended our vision to more-than-human scales. Yet observation itself alters the observed - most famously articulated in the double slit experiment of quantum physics - and a similar paradox emerges when a borehole is drilled to monitor the rate of ice melt in permafrost regions. The gesture at once brings both clarity and chaos. Like the transmutations of ice and water of the permafrost, glass too is never fully stable but rather an ‘amorphous solid’, a future obscura.
Here, Oates employs borosilicate glass to hold distorting views. Water flowing through the horizontal planes of the sculpture activates the system further, while its rigid-seeming frame evokes the familiar pillars of scientific knowledge. Yet the structure’s removable connectors theoretically allow continual reconfiguration, mirroring the shifting grounds of hypothesis, instrument sensitivity, and ways of seeing, with “sensing whiskers” and surveying crosshairs extending this dialogue by recalling the tools of experimentation devised for these fragile environments.
The works exist in a continual state of becoming, as if sensing themselves, the shifting of water, the breath of vapour, a consequence of the interplay of underlying, dynamic processes. They guide our gaze across their surfaces, carrying us through uncertainty. Control, we come to realise, was never ours to hold.
