Much of Lucy Skaer’s work is focused on materials, the meanings that emanate from them and the transformation those meanings can go through. Her diverse practice draws its inspiration from literature, art history, the artist’s memories and found materials. Operating across film, printmaking, sculpture and traditional craftsmanship in an extremely wide range of materials, Skaer blurs the boundaries between traditional art categories. The works are often elusive, their meaning just beyond grasp, yet deeply familiar.
The series Me, Me, Me, Me consists of material that has been re-purposed three times: it started life as Film for an Abandoned Projector (2011). Skaer then removed the centre of each frame and showed the resulting film as Margin of July (2012) while casting the cut-outs in resin lozenges according to scenes of the film in the series Me, Me, Me, Me (2012). The shape of the work, the lozenge with emerald cut, recurs throughout Skaer’s oeuvre. If film is considered as the passage of time made manifest, then Skaer has physically sealed this fourth dimension, adding a new layer to the traditional discipline of sculpture. While she brings film and sculpture closer together through an action which makes the film unwatchable, the iconoclasm inherent in her practice raises intriguing questions around how we look at art.
Skaer’s complex work and her use of unconventional materials bring Aberdeen’s collection up to date by interrogating definitions of traditional classifications such as sculpture and by investigating sculptural possibilities in other media. The acquisition will be shown in the Sculpture Court of the newly redeveloped Art Gallery that will display sculpture from classical plaster casts to contemporary works.
