Lauren Ilsley

The technological age brings huge advantages. However, increasingly experiencing the world through technology overrides our consciousness of our immediate surroundings, increasing the human disconnection from our environment and material experience.

We often ignore our responses to the natural world we have evolved with, particularly to light, the most powerful synchroniser of our circadian rhythm. Recognition of our deep human connection with sunlight can be seen in the man-made structures from ancient civilisations and their alignment to the sun.

This body of work explores objects as devices activated by light in a technical and poetic way. They are sculptures designed to harness all light and create with it. From this collaboration the materially permanent fired clay body can acquire visual transition. The structures enable light to intersect the object, creating projection, and allowing the piece to reach out beyond its form. A connection between the material and the immaterial is constructed – the object provides a material body for the light, and the light brings a ‘life’ to the object.