The Amplifiers are part of the wider ‘Emergency!’ project. This is the title given to a series of drawing events where fragile wax drawings depicting objects of  glacial archaeology  are exposed to the elements at (post) glacial sites in Switzerland. Typically, the drawing is bundled into a ball resembling a rock, or lump of ice. Over time these drawings gathered the marks of the landscape, amplifying the conditions to which the archaeology is exposed once it has emerged from ice.  Like the archaeology and the ice in which the archaeology has slumbered, the drawings will disintegrate if too hot. The Amplifiers engages with traditions of care around drawings , which as works on paper are vulnerable to decay and subject to special conservation measures to protect them from forces such as  light, heat, moisture. The Amplifiers turns this vulnerability into a strength to reveal the invisible actions of  wind, heat, erosion, moisture . The paper, exposed to the elements, raises questions about responsibilities of care - for what, and who do we care for? What get saved  and what is revealed in loss?  The drawings come to act as a metaphor for both the archaeology and by extension, the ephemeral nature of our own corporeal existence.

 

Work was made through collaboration with Valais museums during residency at Musee d’art du Valais in the Swiss Alps (2023).

 

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