* pinch * to zoom presents an ongoing collaboration between Beatrice Vorster and Elli Antoniou, who have been long-time friends and studio companions. The nature of their working process makes it virtually impossible for them to be in the studio simultaneously: B’s sound-based practise requires attentive listening, whilst E’s process is supported by a loud compressor. So, B would work in the mornings, and E would work at night.
Both of their works are infused with each other’s delayed presence; a series of imagined love letters between friends and collaborators. Their collaborative process involves gentle mark making, with their imagery resurfacing in each other’s pieces through digital extrusion and glitchy repetitions.
The works embrace decay, the slow erosion of material flux. Both are concerned with transformation of matter: presenting the parallel of adolescent metamorphosis with the shifting status of metal. The central modular system, triple axel (2023), draws together these fictions and presents a site.
The gallery space is reimagined as a public square – the site of encounters, of spending time, of loitering, of making your mark and reading traces of others. It is where teenagers spend time outside of domestic or school spaces. Where metals rust and glass scratches. These sediments of public spaces presented as layers washing over each other revealing varying stages of decay and accumulation as they fall in and out of synch.
— Amélie Mckee