Caroline Duffy creates work guided by her principles; repurposing found materials such as mild steel sourced from country scrap yards. The evidence of a life lived is often left in the details of the finished piece. Duffy does not strive for perfection, nor does she care for it – ‘rough’ is a word she often uses to describe her work. Yet neither form nor material is chosen arbitrarily; years of making, deconstructing, and reassembling her works culminate in the finished compositions that make up this exhibition.

The varnished steel facilitates a sophisticated yet stripped-back formal language, while the rusted surfaces mediate between past, present, and future environments. With a rich patina formed over time, her surfaces tell the story of transformation and arrival – of ‘anti-environment’.

Central to Duffy’s practice is the dialogue between what is full and what is empty. Her work employs space and matter to create an open channel through the composition of each piece, and her recent addition of woodblock prints represent the two mediums in conversation. The block prints distil the essence of the sculptures, illustrating their open compositions and Duffy’s use of negative space. This space, however, is not emptiness; it is a passage for energy to flow, opening and closing as though moving through a maze.

For Duffy, the joy is in the making. She is interested in the dialectics of space and matter, creating objects with strength and gravitas, with the potential to declare their own place in the environment, wherever that may be.