Tools of the Trade Series

Jason Waterhouse’s sculptural practice is underpinned by ideas of contemporary architecture, urbanisation and how we live with the ‘stuff’ around us. In Waterhouse’s studio, ubiquitous objects such as the body of a car, a gardener’s shed, pencils, tools and tree branches undergo a series of interventions resulting in a hybridised object that occupies an uncanny space between the past and the present, the natural and the manufactured.

In Tools of the Trade, Waterhouse presents a series of everyday hand and power tools that have been seamlessly modified through a number of varied sculptural interventions. Screwdrivers can be seen morphing into branches, an electric sander excretes an explosive lurid glossy pink growth, axes grow burls, antique tools sprout crystalline growths and play host to otherworldly geological forms. 

Tools of the Trade investigates the innate potential of things. Each object alludes to an inner power, some bursting and rupturing from within, others appearing to slowly grow and morph into hybrid forms. There is also a subtle subversion at hand. In making, the tool is the starting point, the implement required to perform the task, to create, to build, however they also demarcate the end, stripped of their functionality the maker also becomes the made. Imbued with Waterhouse’s surreal and often humorous visual language, Tools of the Trade presents hybridised prototypes for a fourth dimension, offering up an alluring and enigmatic world of ‘what if’s’ for humankind, nature and industry. 

Jessica Bridgfoot - 2016

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