Rocks holding up #13 (Sarah Scout Presents, 2024)

Since the 20th century, and with the New Materialist turn, materials used within sculptural practice have been understood to have agency. Rocks holding up #13, continues to question how the expectations and agency of materials can be revealed and inverted in sculptural practice through the framework of abfunction - a neologism that identifies a move away from function in the outcomes and production of art. This work focusses on the potential uplift of the top rock by the blown glass, considering the natural formation of precarious rocks found within the landscape such as at Black Hill, from the lands of the Taungurung, closely neighbouring the Dja Dja Wurrung lands. With this intention and the process of working in a choreographed fashion with the glass blowing process, the form and assembly of the glass bubble and stone is determined –creating the unlikely gravitational act of holding and suspending the precarious rock on top of the stone base.