b.1977, Inverness
“Anderson’s use of materials such as soil, sand, stone and perhaps most significantly coal, has vital associations with the social and political landscape of South Wales. Yet, by coating ordinary objects with a fine layer of coal dust, he combines a key reference to modernity with a greater sense of a substance forged by extraordinary and often violent forces; aligning geological change with the human condition. Anderson’s art carries with it associations of suffering and denial, these seemingly nihilistic tendencies are echoed in his treatment of clocks and watches where the measurement of time is made redundant and replaced with the weight of the material world. The raw, matter of fact quality of these artworks with their collision of the ordinary with an unsettling beauty with their coating of coal, belies Anderson’s fascination with the art object as mandala, a threshold to other ways of being where in this instance dark materials are a means to a more liberated (and illuminated) understanding.”
Russell Roberts
Curator, National Trust (Independent Consultant Curator)
DARK STAR
“Its structure and dynamic is as far from inertia as we can get, an implosion where there should be an explosion, a centrifugal/centripetal force, pushing matter outwards and drawing it in simultaneously. Carbon – the building block of life – glistens back with endless possibilities. A million different crystalline surfaces that reflect, diffuse and scatter light. We get reflection and absorption simultaneously, we get a beginning and an end and the possibility of change. He has made this moment sculptural, halted the action and presented us with a constructed object that holds this point of change before us for examination.”
Anthony Shapland
Artist/g39 Project Director
COAL DUST MANDALA
“Mandalas and coal might equally be seen as power generators: one in the realm of the spirit and psyche, the other in the realm of human industry and technology.
In our secular age a coal dust mandala might mediate a human desire for wholeness and reintegration in the continuum of the universe. Contemplating the legacy of burning fossil fuels brings us back to earth quite literally. Contemporary carbon capture and storage techniques aim to contain C02, the most damaging by-product of burning fossil fuel, in voids left under the earth and sea by gas and oil extraction.”
Joy Sleeman
Senior lecturer in History and Theory of Art at the Slade School of Fine Art
PYLON TOTEMS
“Pylon Totems subverts the language of Eastern and Western forms of worship. Cloaked in rags and bitumen his sculptures make pan-cultural references and allude to Crucifixes, Asian Buddhist statues, South American or African voodoo dolls. Yet the inspiration for their construction was found in the many hundreds of electricity pylons that criss-cross the landscape of Wales. Assembled together, these sticky, black-coated effigies raise questions about the direction and focus of our worship today. “
Dr Ciara Healy-Musson
Lecturer in Art, Culture &Heritage, Carlow Institute of Technology, Ireland
