Csongvay Blackwood — 'R2.5' Sculpture

The R2.5 is a sculpture from Csongvay Blackwood's Making Waves collection, and is based on two broad waves that are now descending from their peaks. Each piece within Making Waves references a range of Reproduction numbers of COVID-19 and was exhibited during Melbourne Design Week, 2021. The R number is the average number of people that one infected person will pass a virus onto another person. The entire world needs to reduce the R number to below R1.0 in order to help stop the spread of COVID-19. The lower the R number, the smaller the wave of the virus, and the smaller the wave of our Making Waves sculptures.

Making Waves is a series of hand-built ceramic sculptures, layered in a series of undulating waves, representing the dramatic forms of pandemics across human history. Pandemics have affected our lives since the ancient Greeks and the Plague of Athens, where disease challenged democratic institutions and human behaviour to the point that it undermined the world’s first democracy. The hard-edge geometries of Making Waves reference how each step towards hygiene and common good is the foundation in reducing these pandemic waves from growing into a tsunami, and by following these steps we can ultimately overcome our current COVID crisis.

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Csongvay Blackwood is a collaboration between Naarm/Melbourne based artists Csilla Csongvay and Matt Blackwood. Their ceramic artworks reference the brutalist architecture of Csongvay's childhhood in Romania and Blackwood's love of Mid-Century Modern. During their design process they explore the tensions that exist between movement and stillness, linear and curve, heavy and light and, positive and negative spaces. Employing slab-building techniques the duo create intentional forms belonging to the future ancient.

Csongvay Blackwood has been commissioned to appear in a diverse range of visual forms in both galleries and public spaces across Australia and overseas including the Art of Dining exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, 2019 and the launch of their collection Making Waves for Melbourne Design Week, 2021.

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Materials: stoneware

Dimensions: approx. 27cm x 12cm x 33cm