Five Minutes with... Tom Borgas
We chat with Tom Borgas, exhibitor from CONCRETE: art design architecture our latest exhibition showcasing 21 outstanding projects by contemporary Australian artists, designers and architects. The exhibition explores innovative ways that concrete is being used in the 21st century.
Photos by Tash McCammon.
As an Adelaide based artist how has the city informed your work?
I’ve lived and worked in the Adelaide CBD for a long time. I walk and ride around a lot and so I feel like I end up being a conduit for a lot of the things I encounter. I soak up the city– it’s structure, materiality and visual tropes and they tend to reemerge through the things I make. These things have helped define a kind of vocabulary for my work.
“I love the inherent complexity concrete has in terms of it’s affects on people and the planet. ”
Your work spans various media. How important is material in your creative process?
Making things is a collaborative process. Sometimes it can be a collaboration with other people but for me, it’s always a collaboration with tools and materials and physical forces. My work always grows out of a conversation between these things. It’s always driven by the agency of things. The materials I work with tend to shift in response to each project but I definitely enjoy the way they inform and intersect with the other things that I’m working with/thinking about.
What do you love about concrete?
So many things! I love the geological origins of the raw materials of concrete and the chemistry of how they reconstitute to form a synthetic kind of stone. Recently I’ve been super interested in the politics that accompany a material that’s so versatile and ubiquitous. I love the inherent complexity concrete has in terms of it’s affects on people and the planet.
Can you tell us about the ideas behind your work Concrete Topology (12 maquettes) in CONCRETE: art design architecture?
Concrete is generally seen as a very stable material but this series of forms plays with notions of instability and flux as integral to the built environment. The language of the blue forms reads as structural however on closer inspection, the majority of the 'supports’ lightly cradle the edges of the heavier concrete fragments. These can be seen as sculptural sketches for what are potentially larger architectural interventions.
CONCRETE: art design architecture is showing at JamFactory Adelaide
from 1 March - 28 April.
