Essay by Luke Jones for Contextualising Practice 

 

Material > Inertia > Entropy > Becoming

 

In contemporary installation and sculptural practices, the artist’s role is increasingly seen as that of a facilitator of dynamic relationships between material, process, and site. Through the investigation of material affordance and entropic change, traditional notions of authorship are destabilised, and non-hierarchical collaborations between artist and material are realised. Material affordance, as noted by Gibson (1979), refers to the potential for action that a material enables, based on its physical properties and context. Entropic change, on the other hand, draws from the natural process of disorder and transformation over time within a material (Pasztory 2005). Drawing from new materialist theory, base materialism, site-specificity ideologies, and installation-based methodologies, I argue for a practice grounded in responsiveness, co-emergence, and the relinquishing of control. My practice is shaped by a non-hierarchical material dialectic, where exchange arises through mutual negotiation rather than imposition. I work with temporal materials not to represent or symbolise, but to engage with their inherent behaviours, affordances, and resistances. In this context, entropy, inertia, and collapse are assessed as forces that actively shape material outcomes. Through considered material restraint, works are insulated from their previous contexts, challenging the dialogue between architectural and affective conditions of space.

Influenced by theorists such as Tim Ingold, Jane Bennett, and Georges Bataille, and by artists including Bianca Hester, Rachel Whiteread, and Donald Judd, my practice questions the hierarchies embedded in authorship, form, and space. In positioning material agency and entropic transformation as modes of resolution, sculptural form becomes an unfolding negotiation between the human and more-than-human. Through this lens, material inquiry is structured around five key concerns: material agency and affordance; entropy and inertia as formative conditions; reframed authorship through collaboration; site responsiveness and psychogeographic engagement; and the implications of a non-hierarchical practice. I seek to articulate a methodology of making that resists resolution and privileges the agency of matter and place.

Material Agency and Affordance

Approaching materials as collaborators, rather than as passive matter subject to external force, reveals their role as active agents within a material ontology. Through listening and responding, to, testing and negotiating with material conditions, latent dynamics and emergent properties arise. This reciprocal dynamism shapes my methodology: material affordances are either revealed or resisted in a process of self-fulfillment and provisional resolution. The concept of affordance, as delineated by James Gibson (1979), describes the relational potential between an organism and the environment, how materials suggest possibilities for action based on suitability, intention, and limitation. Ingold (2013) builds on this through his model of ‘correspondence’, where form is not imposed on matter but arises through mutual exchange between maker and material. My work Rope Hang I illustrates these forces at play. Here, lengths of rope are suspended between two points, faulting under the stress of their own weight. Rather than being shaped or arranged toward a pre-defined form, the rope is chosen for its tendency toward collapse, resistance, and formlessness. Its coiling and tangling behaviour is symptomatic of its physical proclivities – the material reaching a sense of becoming – its resolution as a material subject to both passive and latent dynamics. This echoes Robert Morris’s (1968) argument in Anti Form that form cannot be imposed on materials, foregrounding their physical properties, which shifts attention away from formal compositional control and toward process, indeterminacy, and material action. Like Morris’s use of soft felt and poured lead, the rope’s gestures resist containment and reveal a sculptural logic based on instability and chance. Rope Hang I is responsive to the material itself; it is held in tension between gravity and collapse, acting simultaneously as its own resolution and inhibition to alternative structure. Such interactions reveal the agency of rope as matter, and challenge dominant models of authorship imposed on material works. As the artist, I am no longer the sole originator but a participant in an unfolding system of material co-determination.

This process occurs outside of a linear structure; it emerges through layered gestures that shift towards relational and contingent material states. It manifests both as a singular event and as a series of micro-encounters, each iteration shaping and reshaping the material exchange. Sydney-based artist Bianca Hester’s PhD thesis ‘Material Adventures, Spatial Productions: Manoeuvring Sculpture towards a Proliferating Event’, expands Ingold’s model of ‘correspondence’ into a sculptural language defined by resistance, weight, load, and distributed authorship (Hester 2007). For Hester, sculpture is a ‘a myriad of relations, processes and layers’ that converge through material and spatial interaction (Hester 2007, 7). Her interest lies in engaging complexity: ‘not a dialectical or moral opposition to the production of objects,’ but an ‘interest in engaging in the production of art in ways that promote complexity, rather than reducing it into recognisable forms’ (Hester 2007, 9-10). Similarly to Hester’s practice, the rope’s deferral  to its own concatenation reflects its presence as a ‘proliferating event’ – a continual unfolding that underscores the complexity of the material beyond its nominal form. This resonates with Nicholas Bourriaud’s (2002) framing of artwork as a contingent moment – an event positioned within a larger flow of contributions. These approaches reframe sculpture as an open system where agency is distributed and form is provisional, revealing a work that unfolds through the entangled movement of artist and material.

Material Change as Method

Bataille’s concept of base materialism explores the interdependent relationships present between material perceptions. His essay Base Materialism and Gnosticism (1930) posits that an instability arises from the symbolic elevation of matter and its base, formless reality. Rather than matter being passive or awaiting human imposition, Bataille positions it as inherently resistant to idealisation . This view reorients the human-material relationship as one of destabilisation, where materials resist assimilation into hierarchical systems of meaning. I am drawn to instances where matter refuses to be fixed or contained – where there is a sense of material refusal, or the disruption of intention. These gestures of entropy are not implicit failures but are central to my process: they undo authorship, revealing a dynamic where form is not imposed but resolved in situ. In line with Bataille’s base materialism, my works explore the capacity of material to undermine symbolic authority, and to exist in a state of abjection – a becoming that resists control.

In contrast to Bataille’s emphasis on transgression and material refusal, new materialist thought offers an ontology grounded in relationality and agency. Developed by theorist Rosi Braidotti, new materialism posits that all matter is affective and intra-active, in as far as matter co-constitutes meaning and form through its external relations, rather than functioning as inert substance (Braidotti 2013). Matter is not a backdrop for human action, but a participant in the unfolding of events – shaping and being shaped through ongoing entanglements. Working with variables like tension and time, I treat materials as co-agents, acknowledging their capacity to influence and resist. An installation may be conceived, but its final form emerges through a negotiation with the material within this reciprocal process. This process foregrounds the non-anthropocentric nature of making, where authorship is shared between artist, material, and site . Base materialism in my work highlights the collapse of form, whereas new materialism articulates the collaborative emergence of form through distributed agency and entangled becoming.

Foam Installation I, 2025, Styrofoam, reclaimed rope

Reframing Authorship

My practice proposes a dialogical model of authorship, where decisions emerge through negotiation between artist, material, and site. Rather than controlling or predefining outcomes, I enter into a collaborative exchange in which materials redirect my intentions and shape alternate outcomes. This approach draws from Bennett’s concept of ‘vibrant matter,’ which affirms the active participation of nonhuman forces in shaping events (Bennett 2010). This notion is exemplified through my work Foam Installation I, where authorship is distributed in a co-emergent process with artist and material. In this suspended foam installation, the material is not a medium to be shaped, but a co-creator whose shifting behaviour actively informs the work’s structure, effect, and resolution. The foam resists containment within the rope supports – it buckles and fractures, leaving remnants within the space. These responses are not incidental but central to the work’s unfolding. To understand this dialogical process, Bennett’s model of vibrant matter provides a suitable framework – particularly in how it positions materials as possessing a vitality that enables them to exert agency within assemblages. The foam construction cannot be reinstalled in the same way twice; each iteration emerges from the contingent behaviour of Styrofoam in dialogue with the supporting tension and site . This approach decentralises my authority and positions the act of making as a reciprocal exchange. The work therefore becomes a site of dialogue between human and nonhuman forces, where authorship is not authored, but shared and emergent.

Entanglement and the Co-Emergence of Authorship

The foam block installation further manifests an entangled form of authorship through the extradition of intra-action. Karen Barad articulates this concept in ‘Meeting the Universe Halfway’ (2007), where she refers to the mutual constitution of entities through their co-emergent relations. Barad writes that ‘relata do not pre-exist relations’, meaning that objective relations emerge through their contingent surroundings. In this light, the foam block’s form is not imposed upon it but arises from its intra-active relationships with the variables it encounters (rope, gravity, room dimensions, prior material history and so on). Each installation becomes a site-specific collaboration, a unique arrangement of forces and frictions that cannot be replicated. The pressure of the rope, the fragility of the foam, and the deviating installation process itself all participate in the articulation of the work. As such, the work is resolved through its own becoming, engaging myself as a facilitator within a material ecology. Barad’s entanglement (2007) pushes the idea of collaboration further – beyond conscious dialogue into the realm of co-emergence. Authorship becomes a relational event, rather than a position. The artist, like the foam and rope, is just one node in a constellation of intra-acting forces. In this way, the work reframes authorship as a distributed, co-constitutive practice – a choreography of shared material becoming.

 

An Active Tension

Pillar I consists of a cast plaster column tensioned between two horizontally installed formwork props. The work is physically anchored to the opposing walls of the gallery, transforming the space into a structural collaborator. The formwork props, typically concealed in construction or restoration work, are revealed here as visible armatures that both support and constrain the plaster form. The material fragility of the column stands in contrast to the industrial rigidity of the props – an active tension that is both physical and conceptual. This work engages with Daniel Buren’s proposition in ‘The Function of the Studio’ (1971), where he critiques the conventional separation between production and exhibition.  Pillar I resists such a divide by making the conditions of display inseparable from the work’s meaning. The props intervene in the architectural logic of the room, rendering the site not merely a container but a load-bearing component. The work is constructed within the space and for the space specifically, in that the formwork props are tensioned exactly to the proportions of the space itself and exist as an extension of that space. In this way, the work and the site are conjoined and therefore the work both refutes the presence of a ‘neutral’ exhibition space and acknowledges its existence before and after installation. From this, the installation echoes Buren’s stance that context is not peripheral but constitutive and is inexplicably tied to the facilitation of work.

From a site-responsive perspective, Pillar I aligns with Miwon Kwon’s expanded definition of site-specificity, wherein a work’s meaning unfolds through its interaction with spatial, institutional, and discursive contexts (Kwon 2002). As the formwork props span the breadth of the room, they activate the architecture highlighting the scale and materiality of the exhibition space. The space is rendered as an active constituent of the work, away in contrast to the inert way in which white cube galleries are supposed to function. The installation reads the room structurally and spatially in barrier-like form and dividing nature. Rather than pictorially existing in the space, the installation embodies a ‘relational’ site that is contingent and reflexive. Further, the plaster column recalls Rachel Whiteread’s engagement with negative space and indexical form through her casting of the negative space of things (see Corrin 2001). Like Whiteread’s casts, the column carries the imprint of its mold and bears remnants from its construction. However, unlike her often solid and commemorative forms, Pillar I is placed under continuous strain and functions upon its materialist qualities rather than its symbolic ones. The props exert lateral force, and the column responds with visible resistance. In this way, the work becomes a durational event, recording not just architectural form, but a relationship between the sculpture and the white cube.

 

Toward a Non-Hierarchical Material Practice

In Counterweight II, a plaster block is suspended in a moment of tension and equilibrium, held in place by two timber wedges inserted into a wall cavity. The work resists objecthood as a finalised form and instead reveals the relational interplay between material and architecture. This gesture aligns with Judd’s assertion in ‘Specific Objects’ (1965) that form should be understood in terms of relationships rather than categorisations. Yet Counterweight II moves beyond Judd’s formalism, embracing instead a condition of material interdependence that refuses autonomy. This relational thinking is echoed in the 1969 exhibition When Attitudes Become Form, where process and ephemerality are prioritised over discrete outcomes. Similarly, Louise Schouwenberg’s Material Utopias (2017) insists that materials carry ideological and affective weight. The insertion of timber onto the wall not only bears the block’s mass, but implicates the building itself in the act of support – a moment of dialogue between site and substance that reflects a flattening of hierarchies inherent in the material. This continual transformation finds theoretical resonance in Jacques Derrida’s ‘différance’, where meaning and form is deferred and always contingent upon context and relation (Derrida 1967). In this reading, Counterweight II is not a sculptural conclusion but a suspended proposition of material negotiation and site responsiveness. It embodies a non-hierarchical practice in which authorship is reframed as facilitation, and where meaning is not inscribed but emerges through the matter itself.

Conclusion

When properly examined, material reveals itself as an active collaborator. Working with entropic forms and material agency, my practice seeks to unsettle traditional hierarchies between artist, material, and site, and embraces a collaborative approach. In the installations discussed, authorship is redefined as dialogical and distributed, with decisions influenced equally by material and spatial conditions as by intentional design. This methodology foregrounds responsiveness, impermanence, and collaboration. It proposes a practice where matter, context, and maker intersect to produce outcomes that are provisional, contingent, and materially alive.

 

References

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