Carbon Selves (glass bricks and diamonds)

'Carbon Selves' was a body of work I made whilst on residency in Beijing in 2011, at Where Where Project Space (which no longer exists, I'm told) and Red Gate Residency. The first part being an installation (badly photographed) of structures based on different cuts of diamond. They were made from glass shapes glued with Araldite - so an epoxy resin glue - and stained with vinegar. I got the title from Esther Leslie's 'Synthetic Worlds', which was like my bible for 3 years. 

The glass brick rendition of it was built on the remnants of a tiled floor in the demolished village of Beigao. If you look closely, each brick had a corner missing. This is a bit of theme with me, I hate things complete - stories with an ending, symmetrical frames - can NOT abide! There has to be some sort of rupture, some weak spot, a chink, as hope that I can get through. Anyway, out in the hot, dusty sun of Beijing's July, the vinegar sweated like mad and rotted the glue holding the bricks together. That process would have disintegrated the artwork eventually, if a couple of kids hadn't thrown actual bricks at it, like a battle of two building materials, no prizes for working out which won... but either way the circle of life was complete, the sculpture too turned to rubble.