THE LANGUAGE OF SCULPTURE IN 0-G

Physical sculpture carries a historical language that’s hard to deny. It follows systems, rules, and a lineage that viewers instinctively recognise; a visual language built over millennia. Especially through figurative sculpture, there’s a shared understanding of form, weight, balance, and tension.

Perhaps this is why abstract sculpture often still holds a figurative presence. In my case, my abstract works are rooted in my training in figurative sculpture. I don’t think I would have been able to access the truest form of my abstract expression without that foundation. It comes back to balance, weight, gravity, and tension, principles that are learned through the body.

So when I scan my sculptures into digital space, why do they begin to speak a different language?

They become warped and distorted through the scanning process I use, but it feels like more than that. When I look at them, they feel foreign, harder to understand. And as someone who is constantly engaging with form, I want to understand why.

Maybe it’s because they no longer conform to the physical language of sculpture. Gravity is removed. The rules of three-dimensional space as we experience it are no longer fixed.

When my sculptures emerge from clay, they come from my subconscious,a regurgitation of feelings, thoughts, and research I’ve absorbed over a specific time period. I rarely use secondary visual references. The work comes from something internal or from recycling my own primary forms, continuing ideas across two- and three-dimensional space.

So why am I so drawn to the digital sculptures?

Why do they feel like the unresolved tension in my practice?

Through the tools I use, I’m able to move seamlessly between 2D and 3D scans, software, clay, and paint. But I keep returning to the pull of zero gravity within the digital works.

Maybe it’s because this is an entirely new language, one I haven’t fully learned yet.

Maybe it’s not about the smooth, resolved forms I build in clay. Maybe the clunky, disjointed point clouds are the language.

Perhaps it’s about leaning into a different way of seeing, not the 360 ° we understand physically, but a 360° × 360° spherical view.

I think I’ve been looking at these digital sculptures as if they still belong to the physical world.

But they don’t.

They exist in an omnidirectional space, and maybe understanding that is the key.