Alex Rennie

Assembled as walls, helixes and balancing stacks, my wood paintings are varying compositions of construction timbers also used to describe growth and change. Each length of wood in the Stack paintings corresponds to the city’s population over a certain duration. Some timbers contain found graffiti and scrawls, particularly initials and hearts multiplied over and over to symbolise individual lives, their passing and union. The timbers are sometimes burning and charred to describe energy expended or consumed by the population who will ultimately return to the basic carbon building blocks which will form the next precarious layer. Like the infinitely repeated hearts and initials these ideas include a slightly existential feel. Sometimes splintered, carved or burnt, cracks and ruptures in the wood often form past, present or expanding maps of the city.