Description

Irregular Hourglass by Issac Oloche Johnson is one of three artworks exhibited in GroundWork Gallery’s Fluid Earth Exhibition. Proceeds from the prints go to the Niger Delta Community which enabled Johnson to be able to make the artworks.

‘Irregular Hourglass embodies the paradox of Fluid Earth: land liquified by oil, time disfigured, ecosystems calcified into relics. It is at once shrine, memorial and warning. It refuses to be decorative; it is evidence, testimony and a call to conscience.

I began with a simple photograph of an oil spill on water. In its negative space, I percieved an irregular hourglass silhouette like time running out in distorted form. The photograph became a muse, not because of its documentary truth, but because it revealed an underlying metaphor: time as oil, time as ruin.

The artwork is not a reproduction of the photo but an interpretive leap an hourglass born out of an oil reflection.

The hourglass is traditionally a symbol of time, balance, and inevitability. In this piece, its irregular, rough textured body breaks away from perfection evoking erosion, fossilisation, and the fractured balance of the Niger Delta’s ecology. The black liquid (crude oil) replaces sand: instead of measuring life, it measures destruction. Instead of flowing gracefully, it seeps, coagulates, and stains. I translated the reflection’s fluid swirls into a surrealist background, letting them stand for the paradoxical beauty of oil pollution. I replaced the traditional sand with crude oil to capture the truth that oil is not a meaure of wealth but of irreversible loss’

– Isaac Oloche Johnson.

About the artist

Isaac Oloche Johnson describes himself as a code artisan. Offering a fresh technologically driven approach to engaging with environmental and social themes, Isaac Oloche Johnson has qualifications and experience both in applied psychology and computer science. He crafts immersive digital realms, blending tradition with technology. With a passion for African crafts and artistry, Isaac aims to redefine spatial understanding and enable innovative aesthetic approaches. As a recent Dreaming New Worlds Fellow at the Goethe Institute Nigeria, he explored the intersection of technology and artistry. His research project and interactive exhibition ‘We were here’ reimagined the act of excavation including cultural memory, identity and lost histories, to explore how extractivism affects physical and cultural landscapes. He is specially interested to pursue further projects in connection with Igbo African communities, inspired by traditional Igbo philosophies of nature and resource use Isaac aims to create a dynamic participatory digital archive that explores extractivism through Igbo cultural frameworks aiming to tell layered stories of land, loss and resilience.