‘Entropy’ by Anthea Boesenberg and Peri Tobias at the Incinerator Art Space
Artists’ Statement: “Entropy is the universal tendency towards disorder. There is a relentless process of decay of all matter, despite human efforts to create order from disorder. We take raw materials and make cars, houses, smart phones. All that we build requires energy and yet everything eventually breaks down, decays, rusts. We harvest materials to reorder them into new forms, only to have them once more fall into decay.”
Both from a printmaking background, Anthea Boesenberg and Peri Tobias find a beauty in this slow cycle from dust to dust, of degeneration and rebirth.
Anthea looks at how surfaces are marked by time, exploiting the effects of rust on paper and felt in a celebration of impermanence & imperfection
Peri is working on a doctorate researching the effects on plants of the fungal diseases known as rust. She is working with vast amounts of genetic sequence data taken from plants looking for the small variations in words that signify biological difference. Her images are conceptually based on the sequences and the biology, paying homage to the continual cycle of energy transfer and loss.
‘Cognate 1’ by Peri Tobias
Ink on layered, waxed paper
‘680 minutes.’ by Anthea Boesenberg
rusted paper, tea, CD cases, safety pins, stitching, found paper
the effect of time is recorded in each of these CD cases
details of rust
and stitching
embracing the nature of the process of decay, discovering the magic in chaos
Anthea and Peri are two of those rare and brilliant artists who can build bridges between science and art
The Incinerator by Walter Burley Griffen
open 10am-4pm Wednesday-Sunday
November 19th – December 7th
PS here’s a link to Anthea Boesenberg’s blog a Box of Birds
Exploring Entropy
Posted: November 22, 2014 by Mo Crow in art exhibitions, It's Crow TimeTags: art, exhibitions, inspiration
Comments
It's Crow Time 
~THANK YOU~ for this… Perfect this morning. Perfect to look here….to know this
I love how Anthea and Peri are looking so closely & recording the patterns of nature through their art
Mo, this is very interesting but a bit difficult for me to understand fully..
entropy is the tendency for things to fall apart, to become compost creating the dark matter for regeneration.
“entropy |ˈentrəpē|
noun Physics
a thermodynamic quantity representing the unavailability of a system’s thermal energy for conversion into mechanical work, often interpreted as the degree of disorder or randomness in the system. (Symbol: S)
• figurative lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder : a marketplace where entropy reigns supreme.
• (in information theory) a logarithmic measure of the rate of transfer of information in a particular message or language.
DERIVATIVES
entropic |enˈträpik| adjective
entropically |enˈträpik(ə)lē| adverb
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from en- 2 [inside] + Greek tropē ‘transformation.”
That the word has Greek roots…that they translate as INSIDE TRANSFORMATION delights me. All in all a complicated concept when you examine it.
I love how both Anthea and Peri are discovering the magic in the transformation through a combination of art and science, Old Man Crow wrote a song about Entropy back in 1976 & I illustrated it in 2011
is death too?
everything eventually dies and breaks down becoming fine compost for the next generation
Embracing disorder and finding beauty in it … a wonderful range of thought-provoking images once again … thanks Mo!
Peri and I first met whilst working as gardeners at the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens in the early 90’s, she is one of those rare women who can combine a career in science and art along with being a wife and mother
Always so interesting to view artist’s work from around the world. Wonder how long those rusty works will stay whole? Part of the process, I expect, how they move along in time …
Hi Christi, Anthea is exploring & documenting the nature of Entropy via the effects of decay and rust on paper & felt whilst Peri is exploring the idea scientifically via plant genetics, both have translated their research into art.
To quote further from Anthea’s artist’s statement-
“Physical changes occur when you combine metal, paper and liquid in a kind of alchemy. The rusting process marks and colours both sides of the paper, and breaks down its structure, sometimes leaving holes. These pieces will continue to deteriorate in a celebration of impermanence & imperfection.”
& Peri’s-
“… All processes must lose energy to entropy and to the eventual heat death of the universe. Life is a struggle against this tendency towards disorder. In 1944 Schrodinger defined life in these words, ‘Living matter evades the decay to thermodynamic equilibrium’. And yet this evasion only lasts until the moment of death.”
yup, just as I thought. Thanks Mo!
It’s a big show filling the gallery with 25 works exploring the theme of decay and transformation in depth with a poetic sensitivity
aha…….now fully understood…
Thanks so much for so eloquently representing us Mo. And all the lovely comments from others.
an honour and a pleasure Peri
What a wonderful post, Mo! So much to look at, enjoy, so much to mull over and try to understand. The comments are so interesting and informative, just a brilliant piece.