Anya Gallaccio is a british installation artist whose work i identify with and enjoy.. a core aspect of her work is change and transformation . Both the ephemerality and site specificity make it difficult to document. Gallaccio is careful to discard the material related to an installation once it is closed and resists photographic documentation. In this sense her work is anti monumental, unconcerned with a legacy outside the memories of those who witnessed it..
Anya has worked with such things as fresh flowers which were then left to naturally degrade, chocolate which was left to degrade, and ice which was left to melt.. creating artworks that focused on, and made evident, processes of change and are themselves impermanent. Intensities and surfaces’ made in 1996, was a striking example of Gallaccio’s exploration of the transient, sited in a 19th century water pumping station in east London, made from slabs of ice stacked around an inner core of rock salt, the sculpture melted over a period of three months. The title of the work points to the extreme qualities ( hot/cold, solids/liquids, immutable/transient ) that are at play.
I feel an affinity with her artwork as ‘change’ and the passage of time are factors i involve in my own work.
