Darwinian Bauzouki

Aaron Lawless' work for the exhibition has grown from the storms of late January and early February 2014, which flooded the shannon banks and ripped limbs from trees around the Academy. The Darwinian Bouzouki, made by Lawless out of material gathered from the banks of the river after the storm, is one of a series of instruments responding to ideas of place and use. The images produced chart something of Lawless' process in creating the instruments, from walking the river bank and finding material from the detritus of the storm, selecting pieces of wood and bark, and finding their inherent curves and form. Next, the process of building begins, of weaving the wood together and letting it dry, making a 'Transitional Instrument' somewhere between craft and happenstance. Although the craft involved and the clever and careful use of materials catch the imagination in Lawless' work, they also reveal his negotiation between form and meaning as a sculptor. Often guided by youtube tutorials and DIY instruction manuals, Lawless describes his constructions as makeshift solutions made with the resources at hand. His nuanced attention to the qualities, surfaces and circumstances of the materials he uses, however, makes him a particularly adept interpreter of the tradition and idea of the 'ready-made', evident in his use of metal from a local factory in Carlow, or a washed-up keg from the canal banks in Limerick city. Through finding and reusing what has been abandoned, broken or lost, and giving it both a new use-value and capacity for sound and communication, Lawless also questions and probes concepts of value, labour and the material world in a changing Ireland. The Darwinian Bouzouki, made for WATERMARK, takes its place within his practice as a piece which responds to these ideas, as well as the intimacy between instrument and artist, between wood, bow and strings - surprising, warm and wrought.