Sarah Casey: Negative Mass Balance

Through drawing and sculpture, Casey examines these tensions, merging techniques of making and erasure, space and solidity. Her work investigates what is lost, what is revealed, and the shifting boundaries between human history and geological time.

At the centre of the display is Emergency! What Was Is 2024–25, two translucent drawings on waxed paper. Hanging ceiling-to-floor, these expansive sheets recall the surfaces of ice and are punctured with thousands of pinpricks outlining fragments of glacial artefacts. Light passing through these perforations causes the images to shift, dissolve, and reform as you move through the gallery, mirroring the instability of the objects they depict. Nestled within the folds of the paper are fragile sculptural elements made from glacial flour—the fine sediment left behind as glaciers retreat.

Alongside this installation, Ice Watch 2023 presents miniature glass watch faces inscribed with glacial landscapes. Mounted on tall wooden stands, these images remain almost imperceptible until light casts their shadows onto surrounding surfaces. Casey’s interest in responsive materials extends to Ablations 2023, a series of risograph prints documenting her experiments with exposing wax drawings to sunlight in alpine environments. This process allows heat to erase the drawings over time, echoing the effects of climate change.