Kent-based artist Dawn Bendick started her creative career in painting, textiles and animation, until her MA in Material Futures at London’s Central Saint Martins inspired her to begin working with glass and the controlled lighting that causes her dichroic glass sculptures to change hue. We asked her about her Time Rock Stack installation in the West Wing of Collect art fair (25-27 February 2022), where the artist is also showing with Joanna Bird Contemporary Collections.
What was the idea behind your Time Rock Stack installation?
I take inspiration from the shifting colours, and the textural variations of stone, that occur in natural light. There was a time when we relied on the sun, and sunlight, to track the length of our days and the cycle of the seasons.
Over the centuries, the clocks that we are now familiar with have come to represent the sun’s movement. Paradoxically, they have also mediated, and in many cases diminished, our immediate experience of the sun as an indicator of the passing of time.
The Time Rock Stack responds to its chromatic environment, thereby inviting us to heighten our awareness of the changes that occur naturally in the atmosphere, light, and weather conditions around us.