February 10th – March 12th 2023
presence of absence is Alan Thomas’s first solo show at Art at Wharepuke, he presents work that continues his interest in clays and metals, and associations between them.
Alan Thomas’ practice explores materiality and matter, driven by curiosity as to how humans perceive and understand the world they inhabit. Using processes that prompt interaction between materials, he explores moments of transition and thresholds of uncertainty. Through extended observation of material interaction and behaviour he looks for captured states that might appear to reveal some true state of being, to make tangible some reality of the material. His work is a meditation on what gives objects form, yet the gravitational heart of his practice is an evidence-based denial of this reality.
Drawing on a conceptual framework of accumulated empirical evidence, a counter-intuitive world beyond human senses emerges. By framing material at points of transition, at points where order appears to emerge from extended possibility, he looks for ways to interrogate material understandings. The works, drawn from materials perhaps intuitively considered substantial, invite engagement in a place of uncertainty and seek to deny themselves