Of bodies into novel shapes (November 12 – December 12, MARS Gallery) marks an evolution in Kohl Tyler’s delicate, other worldly ceramics. Exploring themes of flux and transformation, this exhibition is draws on Ovid's Metamorphoses, a sweeping narrative poem of 15 books, weaving together over 250 myths where gods, humans, and nature shift forms—people turn into animals, plants, stars, or stones.

So much of what gives meaning to life and art is flux; shifting, evolving, transforming. Nothing ever still, nor the same. This aspect of life is hyperreal in artmaking; Distilled. We take earthly material like clay, and we inflict upon it time, labour, process and our thoughts, until it is wrought anew, and imbued with meaning.

Reading Metamorphoses we understand this phenomenon of transformation to be a perennial fascination, and one that Tyler pushes to its technical limits in her new solo show. Wielding the elemental forces of heat and gravity, Tyler’s ceramic works, fired at such high vitrifying temperatures, shift, slump, twist and even crack in the kiln. A form of kintsugi is then applied to celebrate where the materials have found their limits. As usual, Tyler’s enigmatic forms appear temporally ambiguous, as if they could have either been excavated from ancient earth, or speculated from a science-fictional future. They speak to deep geologic time, fossilisation, and germination, reflecting the artist’s absorption of narratives that posit future ecological and material possibilities.