Welfe Bowyer
Welfe Bowyer – 'Ouroboros 01' Sconce, 2024
Ouroboros is a series of wall sconces made from salvaged and recast aluminium foundry offcuts. Inspired by early sconce and mirror designs, the series plays with aluminium's illuminating properties and ability to distort and reflect light using candles. Ouroboros challenges our conventional understanding of time and invites contemplation and reflection on the complex nature of beginnings and ends. For each work, the artist used layer upon layer of wax to construct his desired forms before translating them into aluminium through the process of lost wax casting. The works then remain part of an infinite time loop. As the candle wax melts and grows with time and use, this new structure can be celebrated and salvaged, the aluminium remelted, and the wax recast into its next aluminium form, thus giving the design infinite possibilities and life.
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Welfe Bowyer is an artist based in Mahurangi East, Aotearoa/New Zealand. He began experimenting with jewellery and object design while working in the architecture field in Naarm/Melbourne in 2009, allowing him to conceptualise, experiment and create three-dimensional forms on a scale different from architecture. Although predominantly self-taught, Welfe developed his metalworking, gold and silversmithing skills through courses at Melbourne Polytechnic. His works emphasise form and structure, positive and negative space, unique material combinations, and handmade textures used to manipulate how we perceive an object. Welfe graduated from the Victoria School of Architecture in Te Whanganui-A-Tara/Wellington in 2005, receiving the Dulux Architecture & Design Award in 2004. In 2018, he was a finalist in the Mari Funaki Award with his series ‘2C’ / Twice Cast.
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Aluminium
Main Gallery
May 11 – June 22 2024
Aluminium is a single material exploration. Six artists, makers and designers respond to the allure, practicality, and ethics of aluminium and together showcase the versatile applications of this metal within contemporary material practice.
Material: recycled cast aluminium, stainless steel, wax
Dimensions: 60 x 30 x 7cm. 440g