Gurney

Gurney

condensation cure silicone, steel, plywood & caster wheels.

Gurney is a composite sculpture formed from condensation cure silicone, steel, plywood, and caster wheels. It is a companion piece to Sharples’ site-specific work Soft Shell (2023), each featuring a cast from one side of a double-sink taken from a deconsecrated church and mortuary. The work functions as a positive–negative imprint of the building; an embalming, relic and ‘skinning’ of the space, engaging with residual materialities and necro-architectures. The casting–abstraction methodologically attends to the formative practice of Heidi Bucher and Rachel Whiteread. Here, the language of casting becomes a method of translation, of surface into skin, of interior to exterior. In nod to quantum field theory’s understanding that matter is ‘a condensation of other beings, places, and times’ (Barad, 2015, p. 416), condensation cure silicone acted as a material prompt. The process of casting, akin to embalming, renders visible the trans-migration of bodies and the architectures that hold them. The work makes reference to the permeability of bodies and the afterlives of space, using castor wheels as a marker of movement.

Exhibited as part of the residency & exhibition: Testing Ground at Serf, Leeds.