Hugo Blomley, 'Humility Circuit'.

19 Aug - 4 Sept 2023

The title of the show was originally Freelove (Bowser sculptures). Sylvanus Freelove Bowser invented an assemblage of machines to distribute liquids in standardised units, allowing them to be sold at a fair market price. These ‘bowsers’ became the first automobile fuel pump, and would later lead to his invention of the self-measuring gasoline pump. Bowser died a destitute man.
Sylvanus’s middle name, Freelove, or ‘free love’, is a guiding principle that I would like to adopt. I admire in others the ability to give love without the necessity of reciprocation and with a sense of abundance — to love without holding an object of desire. Perhaps this begins with a sense of humility? Ultimately we are small, and it’s important to remain humble. It is ugly to allow your ego to become over inflated. Manifesting an abundance of love with humility, without an object, reminds me of the love one might have for god.
Originally, these works arose from a formal interest in the petrol station (I found it attractive). These forms obscure the internal mechanics of a petrol bowser, protecting the assemblage of its parts and simplifying it as an abstraction. Covers and veils, protecting and obfuscating - they create a new order by means of alteration.
We cannot live fully conscious lives, the shadow is mediated by the ego, amongst other things. A veil is important. Mediation is a necessary response to what is unknown. Perhaps free love means to carefully ward off fear during this embrace.
These sculptures harbour my desire — designed to facilitate simplicity, they oscillate between complex bodies and covers. They are manifestations of how I feel and what I want, moving between expansion and reduction. Bodies which interpretively render perception, figuration and historical engineering. Within these sculptures is at once a scarcity and excess of energy and love. Air flows through them mutually, yet only in one can we see this movement.