Ross Deeley

Text ~ Bitumen ~ Bricks ~ Cardboard ~ Rubber ~ …~

Instagram: @rdeeleyart

 



Our contemporary climate and society are defined by industrialisation and our thoughtless use of fossil fuels. Oil is anonymous; paradoxically permeating most aspects of our lives while its presence is masked and hidden.

Working across drawing, sculpture, and installation, I manipulate various forms of petrochemicals in space to explore the explosive ecological and political dangers of oil. These forms are organised as museological agglomerations of bitumen and fossil-like specimens resting on a vulcanised rubber sheet. Bitumen clumps together in frozen and fractured explosions of matter, drawn in space.

Flows and splutters of raw, excavated oil taken straight from the Earth, are full of tension and instability. The materiality of petrochemical products directly points to the impact of human-induced climate change. The extracted lifeblood of the Earth cries for attention.