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.
To visit the exhibition at Mount Stuart please contact contactus@mountstuart.com to book. More information on this exhibit can be found on the Patricia-Fleming website. Featured image credit to Ilana Halperin, The Rock Cycle, 2021, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute.
Really enjoyed and was intrigued by the exhibition. As someone who grew up in chicago, but have lived in Scotland since 1974 and went to gsa in my 40’s 1990-1994 and have painted and etched rocks among other things I was very curious and interested in geological phenomena incl. West highland fault and continental drift eg morayshire. Please see ‘changing tides’ society if Scottish artists or rackwick bay, paper to gold exhib. Edinburgh printmakers. Hope Ilana Halperin sees this. Thanks.