Thomas Falconer

VIRTUAL TOUR

ARTIST CATALOGUE

Storm Warning

“My own effort is to try and bear witness to something that will have to be there when the storm is over, to help us get through the next storm. Storms are always coming.” James Baldwin.

I was born into a politically conscious family during a time of national optimism and grew up believing we were living through a wave of unstoppable transformation. That hopeful vision has since faded, revealing instead a fractured present marked by unfulfilled promises and systemic inertia. With the innocence of childhood behind me, the grief and disorientation of watching a reconciliatory dream decay has driven me to question how the winds of change function, how they can pick up and then die down again so suddenly. 

This presentation has coupled this inquiry with the urgent need to find stability in this moment of profound global unravelling. Baldwin’s reflection on the inevitability of rupture has leant me a conceptual anchor in this process, as I work to capture the energy of the present moment, the eerie silence between storms. My work embodies a spirit of questioning, each form probing the nature of viability, fragility, and possibility. Through hybridised sculptures built from scavenged materials and studio offcuts, I have explored cycles of collapse and reform, seeking both to understand my place in it all, and a means to fortify myself as I proceed through the chaos. These forms emerge from a process of constant making and unmaking that rejects the misnomers of linear development and finality, instead mirroring the disordered nature of contemporary life and social change. 

As objects of prediction, signalling and endurance, they make individual posits about weathering tumult and holding space for future possibility. As a collective, they convey the paralysing tension of the present and the sense of overwhelm at the insurmountably large storm the future holds. Rather than offer resolution in this time, I aim to hold space for inquiry and reflection. In a world saturated with noise and fractured attention, the act of sustained focus, on form, material, and emotion holds vital properties that inform grounded response. As the storm looms on the horizon, I ask not only how it is that we claim the space for present thought, but how we locate a reason to proceed when false hope has let us down before.