REPLICA

This body of work stems from observations made during beach walks and bush walks.

Like an invasive species, the common tile spacer can be found wedged or washed up almost anywhere. The beach plastics shown come from near and far: Port Phillip Bay, Mornington Peninsula, Phillip Island, and Henderson Island of the Pitcairns.

Tools once made from natural resources, replaced with plastic solutions, are now plastic problems. At odds with the environment, this discreet object of mass production is weighed and measured against traditional materials of the Pacific – a junction of right angles, slowly replicated in bone and shell.

While making this work, Liv noticed the native climber, Clematis microphylla, flowering in abundance around the river – the flower’s scale and 4-sepal structure resonant with the growing collection of Xs in her studio. En masse, the intersecting forms appear celestial, like the vine in bloom, star-studded, gently exploding. A single plant, a galaxy, mirroring the drift of countless spacers swirling in currents, waiting to beach.