Torin Francis.
Strange Weather
University of the Sunshine Coast Art Gallery
Artist Statement
‘Gyre’ is a site-responsive installation comprising six kinetic sculptures that repurpose and re-contextualise weather-related objects including Venetian blinds and windscreen wiper motors.
These sculptures resemble weather monitoring instruments such as anemometers (wind gauges) in that they spin and are placed at various heights and locations as if they are responding to the gallery’s atmosphere. However, the movement is driven by the sculpture’s various components that sometimes work against each other in a struggle of torque and gravity.
Weather affects our mood and the way we navigate our environments, yet we often overlook the everyday objects that help us manage this. ‘Gyre’ encourages us to reconsider this relationship and how we perceive the passing of time.
About the artists
Torin Francis is a Meanjin (Brisbane) based artist originally from London. His practice considers the devices we use to quantify, navigate, and comprehend how the passing of time is perceived and experienced. This engagement with these mechanisms is explored through poetic relationships between objects and space in site-responsive installations, kinetic sculpture, assemblage, and moving image works. Francis re-evaluates and re-contextualises objects in both outdoor and indoor spaces. Natural phenomena, such as wind, weather and the environment, are used to harness outcomes, and material remnants from previous work are used in assemblages within the gallery space.
Torin graduated from the Queensland University of Technology in 2017 with First Class Honours. Recent solo exhibitions include BLINDSIDE Gallery, Melbourne (2019), Milani Gallery, Carpark, Brisbane (2019) and Gyre, Metro Arts, Brisbane (2019).
Credits: Torin Francis