Ilana Halperin, The Rock Cycle, 2021, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute
ILANA HALPERIN There is a Volcano Behind my House
Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute 6 June - 15 August 2021
For one of her largest solo exhibitions to date, Ilana Halperin has created new works inspired by the geology of the island of Bute where she now spends much of her time. Situated throughout the house, four distinct yet contiguous series of sculptures, works on paper and textiles reference ‘immigrant’ minerals embedded in the fabric of the building, as well as geologic phenomena found on the island. Halperin describes this work as a constellation combining personal, poetic and corporeal responses to the house and island.
For over twenty years Halperin’s work has explored the relationship between geology and daily life. Through drawing parallels between very personal events, for example when she was born or when her father died, with the birth of a volcano, she has allowed for a space to think about our place within the geological time continuum from a more intimate perspective. To articulate a corporeal sense of geological time, she forms sculptures using natural geological processes, which change within our own life spans – from high velocity calcifying springs in France to geothermal pools in Japan. Her work deals with geological intimacy, vivacity, and the uncanny fact that something as apparently inert and certain as stone was once liquid, airborne, ash and alive.