Transparency in flux:
Examining ecological relationships of glass
By Shireen Marican
A Place with No Sand is a visual exploration of the material histories of glass, its contexts and properties at surface, and a deeper examination into the layered and complex technical processes and sociological systems that make and waste the material. The four newly created works, Field, Composition, Fill and Foram are the culmination of experimental techniques and a year-long conversation between Genevieve and Shireen, developed from the conscientious use of materials in art making through technical and conceptual viewpoints.
Drawing inspiration from the practical examination of sites or fieldwork, Field sets the scene for the exhibition by immersing visitors with an atmospheric sound (a clink on a glass), and an invitation to draw comparisons and parallels between the visual and the theoretical in the works, ultimately considering how glass relates to its environments.
In the work, glass sand recreates the abstract radial drainage river patterns found in Singapore’s rivers – drained from the country’s highest point at Bukit Timah Hill. Drainage patterns are typically formed by erosion in water bodies, and over a period of time, the deposited sediments become a time capsule geologists can examine to understand climate histories.
The human-made glass is a durable material with a variety of uses, becoming more pervasive in this age even when the shift towards green solar energy or the more flexible remote work contexts means more widespread uses for the material. Conscientious, regenerative production and uses for glass is urgent - but recognising our power and ability to steward this in our local context requires a more comprehensive understanding of glass making.
Glass making needs key ingredients like the chemically produced soda ash and raw minerals like silica, limestone and salt. Raw minerals are still extracted and mined today to a large degree despite competition for resources like these cascading into critical global socio-political issues.
Composition examines these ingredients in isolation to retell their origin stories visually. Genevieve’s experiments with soda ash, limestone and silica result in layered frames that are built upon scans of each of their largest extracted and exported contexts, and textured surfaces sthat encourage closer inspection of the material’s beauty and ability to transform in different ways.
The earthy tones of Composition resonate visually with the origin contexts of the ingredients and minerals examined. The stark white soda ash over an aerial scan of the Onondaga lake in New York state in the US, famous for its salt and limestone (key ingredients in the chemically produced material). The muted green in Limestone layered on a print of the Ipoh Limestone Hills. Finally, the blue in silica like the river in the Mekong deltas, where sand mining takes place at a far greater rate than reported.
Fill is an attempt to compress the growing rate of sand mining into six weighted grids. These structures represent six provinces in the Mekong region - Tien Giang, Soc Trang, Tra Vinh, Han Giang, Vin Long, Can Tho, Dong Thap. Each province has been significantly impacted by long-term and vast sand mining in varying degrees.
The weight and size of each grid is a symbolic quantification of the volume of sand extracted in the provinces at a scale of 1:1 billion. These grids are data storage units defined by their weight as proof of the volume of sand transported from the region to others, foregrounding invisible manual labour in the work of ‘global urban development’ - a term more increasingly investigated within contexts of planetary emergencies, neo-colonialism and social equity.
Similarly, Foram captures data (material footprints) like a visual diary. Short for Foraminifera – the tiny shelled organisms found in marine environments, forams hold hundreds of living organisms despite their size. These organisms are known to tell the age of sediments and provide useful climate data that reveal the changes and developments in climate and the environment. Though much smaller in nature, their physical appearances become intertwined with humankind’s daily activities due to our immense impact on the climate today, etching memories of our careless living onto their shells.
The visual diary of the work Foram becomes a short tale in the story of Genevieve’s life. Imprints of her deciduous (baby) teeth and toothbrush are reminders of her childhood and livelihood, encouraging us to reconsider our personal relationships with materials today that determine our individual and collective histories in the future.