Oxide
Cecilia Jacobs
2–19 October

Cecilia Jacobs’ exhibition Oxide is a meditation on the subtle, often overlooked beauty found in the worn surfaces of the urban and industrial environment. Drawing inspiration from the backs of trucks, skip bins, and other utilitarian metal structures, Jacobs captures the accidental marks left behind by weather, time, and repeated use. These incidental traces—scratches, rust blooms, abrasions—form abstract compositions that speak to a quiet kind of visual poetry, one rooted in the everyday.

The works explore the materiality of metal and rust, and how these elements interact with traditional printmaking processes. The textures and corrosive marks on the printing plates are not merely aesthetic choices—they are central to the conceptual core of the series, reflecting themes of impermanence, erosion, and transformation.

This industrial sensibility is delicately offset by the use of fine Japanese paper, onto which the works are printed. The fragility and organic quality of the paper contrast with the roughness of the source materials. Some prints are framed in aluminium, echoing the metallic origins of the imagery and reinforcing the tension between fragility and strength, decay and refinement.