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THE MYSTERIES OF NATURAL - OBJECTS
Stuart’s production as a whole is characterised by the interest for the physical character of the natural-objects, their specific place within their specific environment and their relationship to culture, myths and history.
It is with this perspective in mind that he creates his work. Constantly wandering, Stuart searches for laces where the impact of the forces of nature can be most strongly felt.
He has travelled from one extreme geographical end ecological-to the other: from Central America’s green and luxuriant vegetation and sunburnt planes, to Scandinavia’s ice- and snow- covered mountain landscapes. In all of those places that he has been he has quite deliberately used those local materials available: spruce bark from Black Forest, bracken from “Forest of Dean”, ice from Finland, papyrus and pelican feathers from Peru, goose feathers from Canada, willow from Denmark, Giant Hogweed from the north of Norway and cork and feathers from Portugal.
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He explored something similar in the installation
The Temple that was made in a folly in Scotland a recidency in Dumfries an Galloway. Stuart used the same roof thatching technic and filled the follies floor with this softer material.
To some extent the studio works can be seen to break that pattern. He has parallel actively exhibited this work in Galleries and Museums. Their relationship to the artist’s environmental works, is nevertheless important. In the same way as the works carried out in nature, Frost’s sculptures signify an unmistakable respect for the organic materials- as well as a skilful manipulation of those often too forgotten materials. Frost playfully investigates the distinctive characteristics of the materials, by stretching their inherent properties to extremes. This theme runs like a thread trough his production-trough the whole of his artistic development.
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The original and unique in Frosts works lies in the metamorphosis of the organic materials. Frost is consequently faithful to the inherent character of the raw material, at the same time as he with an open mind lets it go through extensive aesthetic transformations. He changes them into something quite different, and by doing this makes us see-for example the Giant Hogweed-in a completely new way. |
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He turns them into something else-something beautiful, somehow paradoxical and somewhat surprising-in order to let us see more clearly what they really are. It is not the artist’s subject, but the mysteries of natural objects, which are explored in these artworks.
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