Adriana Furlong

a great flurry of movement, 2021

archival blueprints, copper dust (oxidized), handcast concrete tiles
18”x24”

Untitled, 2022

Hand cast cement tiles, archival blueprints, copper dust (oxidized) on dry-wall

Drinker of dust, 2021

cement, oil paint, marble dust
11” x 14”

Chorus of idle voices, 2021

(detail) a great flurry of movement, 2021

archival blueprints, copper dust (oxidized), handcast concrete tiles
18”x24”

(detail) Untitled, 2022

Hand cast cement tiles, archival blueprints, copper dust (oxidized) on dry-wall

Artist Statement

Scattered detritus left behind in the imperative of relentless progress, geometries of infrastructure, dust falling from construction, lost narratives from the rubble, city architecture, anonymous bodies embedded in urbanization: these are the fodder for my work.

The scattered detritus left behind in the relentless urban imperative to chase progress informs every aspect of my work. I am interested in the chorus of anonymous bodies that urbanization has tagged as useless. The residue of their memories resides in interstitial spaces, forgotten in the gathering dust falling from construction. These memories and their material expressions perturb me and elicit my compassion. I source concrete, copper, and plans from the remnants of urban improvement and I construct surfaces for lost narratives from the rubble. I stitch these memories together to forge a different kind of architectonics.While I peel away the exoskeleton of
buildings and see their makers’ fingerprints stippling the surface, I seek those whose unseen labor has stratified over time to create infrastructures of gestures, of traces. These are gestures and traces that I seek to reproduce when working with my materials. In my practice, I inhabit the various stages of construction, using my hands as I imagine laborers might. I hand-cast concrete tiles and arrange them to support each other maximally within a grid formation. The composition
emerges from the tiles in concert, which I then seal with my touch: my fingers tracing copper paint across the grid, joining the tiles together. My imprint fades as the paint oxidizes but I have left a residue on these surfaces. The materiality of urban progress carries a potentiality like that of a camera: both act as silent witnesses to dislocation, development, and failure.

How does the body exist within this structure ever in flux? My work seeks to surface mute histories of the forgotten, lost and buried.