Negative Mass Balance is new exhibition of research led art objects responding to the challenges faced by glacial archaeology. the research asks how the languages of drawing and sculpture might be combined to examined tensions of marking and erasure, space and solidity to articulate the experience of appearance through loss.
The research explored relationships between the mould and stencil, and the use of these related devices to ‘cast’ ephemeral matter to articulate inversion and give form to absence. Examining examples of stencils in held in the HMI archive revealed the stencil itself to be a sculptural object. This opened up thinking about space, vessels, portals, apertures and how a surface might be literally opened up and considered as a sculptural object. This archive and library research was supported by collaboration with glacial archaeologists in Switzerland to examine artefacts and sites.
The resultant works are made with wax, paper and rock flour left by retreating glaciers. Paper off-cuts of earlier work are coalesced into forms recalling man-made objects, held between translucent sheets of waxed paper, fused together with heat. This sheet becomes a gossamer fine space in which matter is suspended, but cut and pierced, the sheet also allows the passage of light, casting shadows of objects held suspended. The work subtly wafts with air currents, imagery shifting with the position of the viewer as the light changes. This sense of movement is accentuated by the presence of shadows, amplifying the shapes on the paper. With fragments held in place by heat and marked into wax, the works, like the archaeology they depict, are contingent on their environmental conditions – light, air currents, temperature. Ultimately, if they get exposed to extreme heat, they too will disintegrate and be destroyed.
This work investigates what is lost, what is revealed, and the shifting boundaries between human history and geological time. At the centre of the display is Emergency! What Was Is 2024–25, two translucent drawings on waxed paper. Hanging ceiling-to-floor, these expansive sheets recall the surfaces of ice and are punctured with thousands of pinpricks outlining fragments of glacial artefacts. Light passing through these perforations causes the images to shift, dissolve, and reform as you move through the gallery, mirroring the instability of the objects they depict. Nestled within the folds of the paper are fragile sculptural elements made from glacial flour—the fine sediment left behind as glaciers retreat.
Alongside this installation, Ice Watch 2023 presents miniature glass watch faces inscribed with glacial landscapes. Mounted on tall wooden stands, these images remain almost imperceptible until light casts their shadows onto surrounding surfaces. Casey’s interest in responsive materials extends to Ablations 2023, a series of risograph prints documenting her experiments with exposing wax drawings to sunlight in alpine environments. This process allows heat to erase the drawings over time, echoing the effects of climate change.
