FOUNTAINS, FLOWERS AND A WAVE
2006
Silicon carbide, paint, Artex, polystyrene, can, cigarette butts
222 x 165 x 200 cm
Inspired by his Hackney neighbourhood, Richard Nik Evans’s Black Grape draws from the grittiness of urban culture, reinterpreting Hokusai’s iconic wave through a contemporary lens of commercialism and social unease. Sculpted from polystyrene covered in glistening silicon carbide grains, a material used for cutting diamonds and making sharp rocks smooth, the monumental form freezes an oceanographic threat over the debris of casual pleasures. By juxtaposing this raw force of nature with the fragile, ugly form of fag butts and a locally popular soda Black Grape, whose logo is a curving palm tree which mirrors the sculpture’s dominating form, Evans evokes lacrimae rerum (the tears of things). The towering wave becomes a symbol for crushing economic forces suggested by sandy glitter, rendering a profound sense of human powerlessness in the face of overwhelming commercialism. The exhibition also felt prescient as it was held just before the terrible tsunami of 17 July 2006, which struck the southern coast of Java, Indonesia, where around 600 people lost their lives.
2007
Resin, bag, foam, sand, hydroponic light
80 x 115 x 115 cm
2006
Resin, clay, steel, mirror
170 x 242 x 215 cm
2006
Hydroponic tank, water pump, tubes, cables, de-ionised water, plastic fasteners, wax, aluminium, steel
43 x 139 x 65 cm
2006
Hydroponic tank, water pump, tubes, cables, de-ionised water, plastic fasteners, wax, aluminium, steel
96 x 119 x 68 cm
2006
Hydroponic tank, water pump, tubes, cables, de-ionised water, plastic fasteners, wax, aluminium, steel
205 x 154 x 51 cm
Comprised of a sculpted wax hooded sweatshirt connected to a hydroponics unit, Hoodie broaches a neo-gothic shroud with a variety of dark cultural and political references. Hanging from a thin steel wire, inert, like an ominous fabric pendulum, the jacket, with its black jagged lower half, invokes associations with sportswear, religious garb and, importantly, at the time it was made, the hooded figure of Abu Ghraib, one of the defining and most horrifying images to emerge from the prison abuse scandal in Iraq. At the same time, the hoodie itself was circulating in public discourse as a symbol of defiance and an anti-establishment emblem, becoming increasingly associated with youth culture and politicised media narratives. David Cameron's widely reported call to "hug a hoodie" became one of the defining phrases of the debate. A press photograph of a teenager swearing at Cameron, his hood pulled low over his eyes, reinforced the garment's role as a visual shorthand for rebellion, social anxiety and class politics.
Coated in black Victory wax, the suggestion of a figure is given a malleable, tar-like skin through which embedded tubes continuously emit sweat or crying-like streams of water that fall into the watery darkness below. Evans utilises marijuana growing equipment: a black coffin-like bath, a fountain pump and black horticultural tubing. Together these elements become both plinth and machine, pumping water over a resistant surface while serving as a foundation for altered perspectives, a symbol of interdependence, and both the source and receptacle of this endless cycle of dripping water. The faint, unrelenting sound of raindrops, created by the continuous loop, suggests tears and gives the piece an air less of menace than of melancholic contemplation.
2004
Hydroponic tank, water pump, tubes, cables, de-ionised water, various fasteners, wax, aluminium, steel
260 x 156 x 60 cm
2003
Hydroponic tank, water pump, tubes, de-ionised water, plastic fittings, cables, wax, aluminium, steel
310 x 160 x 60 cm
Eaux developed from experiments with a dark sculpting wax that, when heated to make it malleable, retained the appearance of cast bronze. Water poured over its surface was repelled, running across the wax in vein-like channels. The principal element of the work is a suspended waterfall, water drops approximately four feet into a tank before being pumped back up through the sculpture. The hydroponic system, associated with the cultivation of plants in artificial environments and with the drug culture of the period, introduces an industrial and technological infrastructure behind the apparent spectacle. Perfume bottles, arranged as stabilising pendulums around the rear of the work and incorporated into the waterfall, bring this machinery into contact with the aesthetics of luxury and desire.
The work explores desire as a movement between the internal and external worlds: the impulse to make an idea, feeling or fantasy tangible. Perfume is an example of desire manufactured around an object. Its appeal depends not simply on the product itself, but on the images, associations and promises attached to it. The bottle becomes a vessel for an imagined identity, concealing the mechanisms through which that fantasy is produced. Beneath the glamour lies an engineered system of production and persuasion, just as the hydroponic fountain depends on pumps, tubes, tanks and circulating water to sustain its effects. The work draws attention to the hidden infrastructure behind illusion, and to the dirt, toxicity and artificiality that glamour can conceal.
For Eaux, the fountain becomes a machine for the circulation of desire and meaning. Water is collected, pumped and released; cultural associations are attached to objects; fantasies are manufactured and consumed. The wax, imitating bronze, introduces another ambiguity between material and appearance. These systems suggest that meaning is not simply contained within an object but produced through the mechanisms that surround it. Eaux brings together the machinery of hydroponics, the fantasies of consumer culture and the artifice of sculpture to examine the uneasy relationship between what is presented to us and what must remain hidden for the illusion to work.
2006
Paint, resin, clay, steel, perspex, lacquer, wax
126 x 92 x 92 cm
2006
Butterfly, paint, resin, varnish, clay, steel
18 x 73 x 18 cm
2005
Resin, clay, steel, wire, perspex
125 x 70 x 105 cm
Made between 2003 and 2007, these works explore the uneasy relationship between nature, urban life and an increasingly artificial world. Emerging from the cultural landscape of early-2000s London, they reflect a period shaped by gentrification, technological change, consumer culture and political uncertainty.
Nature appears in different forms throughout the series. It is overwhelming in Black Grape, tender and battered in Broken Mirror, cultivated through the hydroponic systems of the fountain works, and imagined as a means of escape and transformation in Versus, which draws on the optomistic imagery of science fiction book covers. Plants, water, rocks and flowers are removed from their familiar associations with beauty and harmony and placed within environments that are artificial, unstable or melancholic.
A series of fountains combines sculpted wax with hydroponic equipment, using pumps, tubes and tanks to maintain a continuous circulation of water. The wax resembles bronze, yet water breaks across its surface in branching streams, unsettling the apparent solidity of the sculpture. These works bring together natural processes and engineered systems, creating an uneasy relationship between the materials themselves and the structures designed to control them.
Across the series, familiar objects and natural forms are transformed through unexpected combinations of materials and associations. A hooded sweatshirt becomes a spectral, political presence; a discarded drinks can and cigarette butts sit beneath a monumental wave; rock formations suggest an isolated planet suspended in space. Perfume bottles, flowers, clothing and geological structures move between physical objects and cultural symbols, their meanings shaped by histories of desire, consumption, politics and popular imagery.
The works reflect the contradictions of the 2000s, a period at once optimistic, hedonistic and politically charged. Drawing on urban culture, the gothic and science fiction, they bring seductive surfaces into contact with decay, anxiety and technological intervention. Throughout Fountains, Flowers and a Wave, sculpture becomes a means of examining how objects acquire meaning and how systems sustain the fantasies attached to them. The works bring material processes into contact with cultural projection, exposing the mechanisms beneath their surfaces while preserving the mystery of their forms. Beauty and unease coexist, and the boundary between the natural and the artificial remains unresolved. Through gothic sensibilities and the artifice of smoke and mirrors, the works suggest how glamour and spectacle can obscure deeper social and political realities, creating seductive façades behind which truth becomes malleable and the mechanisms of power increasingly difficult to discern.
