Why Pay Attention?
Jordan Azcune has hit his stride in the past 12 months, showing in seven exhibitions in the first half of 2021 alone, while also being a finalist in the 66th Blake Prize and the National Still Life Award 2021. Azcune has completed mentorships with Lincoln Austin and Urban Art Projects, apprenticed with Leonard Brown, and undertaken a residency in America.
What do they do?
Primarily working with beeswax, glass, gold and pigment, Azcune is obtusely aware of the historical and contemporary context of the mediums. In a heated studio, he engages with wax in its liquid form, casting it when molten. In this way of working, wax simultaneously holds memory and form. It binds like glue, performs like paint and resolves like sculpture.
What’s going on?
Through his learnt experience of theology and belief systems, Azcune is interested in understanding humanity’s spiritually and assimilating different belief systems. Melding and merging conceptual ideas and ideals materialised through mediums, Azcune accepts that his artworks can be at once aesthetically beautiful and probing when viewed through a theoretical lens.
The artist says…
‘Beeswax has a certain resonance that is attractive. I see it as a powerful and relatively under-explored material. In a way I’m playing the role of Icarus, I’m curious to see how far I can push wax to celebrate it entirely.
See it at…
Azcune’s exhibition Post-Christian Camp exhibits at N.Smith Gallery, Sydney from 31 August to 25 September 2021.