Eleanor McCullough and Giulia Gentili: Thinking like a mountain
Thinking like a mountain draws together the work of two Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop studio holders, Eleanor McCullough and Giulia Gentili.
OPENING: 20 FEBRUARY 2020, 7 – 9 PM
EXHIBITION: 20 FEBRUARY – 24 APRIL 2020
As the first collaborative exchange between McCullough and Gentili, this project has highlighted three central dualities at the heart of both their work: the natural and synthetic, object and image, and actual and virtual.
These intrinsic themes are explored through digital scans, cast replicas, and the printed word. Taking advantage of the Hawthornvale Space’s unusual characteristics, a support structure harbours a constellation of hybridised objects sealed behind a glass plane, visible only from a single axis.
Both Gentili and McCullough use the process of translation through digitization as a means through which to better understand the world around us – a world where the ‘here’ of the material and the ‘there’ of the virtual are increasingly indistinguishable. From Gentili’s 3D printed rock casts to McCullough’s body-scan silk prints, both artists gather and archive elements of the natural world through digital means, leveling each element in turn. While the digital is a key player in this process of comprehension, both artists always return to the material, working across plaster, metal, wood, and printed textiles.
The title takes after Thinking Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold, who writes of the profound interconnectedness of every element within an ecosystem.
