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In this piece, Hannah Lees adopts the egg as a symbol of fertility and life cycles to reflect on her own winding journey to parenthood. To create this work, Lees poured molten pewter into empty egg shells that she had collected from her own food preparation - their contents having nourished Lees and her family. The hot metal reacted with the eggs’ membranes, leaving each cast with its own unique and unexpected patina. This witch-like alchemical repurposing of foraged detritus is a common thread in Lees’ practice, whether using food scraps to make sculpture or to dye fabrics, or setting beachcombed objects and pigments into plaster tablets, her outcomes always feel as if bound by some magical substrate.
Hannah Lees (born 1983) lives and works in Margate and London, UK. Her work investigates ideas of cycles, constancy and mortality; the sense that things come to an end and the potential for new beginnings. This constancy, be it in religion, science, history or in organic matter, is visible in her practice through her attempts to make sense of and recognise traces of life. Traditional processes, materials and rituals are often reworked to explore how ideas and beliefs can live, die and be reborn across times and cultures.
