April Martin loves handmade objects. For her series titled We are Heirs to the Glimmering World, currently on show at Visual Voice Gallery, Martin transforms traditional materials into astonishing objects of art. A web of quaint, delicately crocheted doilies is held up a foot above the gallery floor by a circle of colourful, translucent casts of the artist’s arm and hand. The stretch of filigree lacework is reminiscent of microbes, a tangled spider web, or the cratered surface of the Moon. Echoing the floor piece is a wall-mounted object, a more literal depiction the Moon, created from a circular steel plate which was pierced and melted by the artist with a plasma cutter until the metal resembled a delicate piece of lace.

Each sculptural piece of the exhibition seems unconnected: the two Moons, the traditional quilt suspended from the ceiling, the terra cotta sculpture of a boat with its mail sail made up of a flock of tiny clay triangles, floating above the hull like a cloud. But seen together the artworks suggest the story of a celestial voyage, of floating in space, and of a memory of days past when everything we owned betrayed the traces of our hands.

Visual Voice Gallery, space 421
April Martin
We are Heirs to the Glimmering World
October 6 – 15, 2011
www.visualvoicegallery.com