SHOW of the Week: The Inescapable Brilliance of Hany Armanious' Exhibition 'Stone Soup'

Making art out of rubbish isn't exactly a new concept. You can, of course, look at it from a sustainable perspective. However, more often than not, making 'greener' art that benefits all (including the environment) is just the byproduct of an artistic endeavour, done simply for art's sake. Take a look at the work of Tim Noble and Sue Webster for example, whose extraordinary shadow sculptures have been impressing gallery goers since their conception in the 1990s; such work isn't done from a standpoint of wanting to reduce waste, it's about sheer creativity that can equally dumbfound and unite audiences in their delight.

What I'm trying to say is, more often than not, what looks like rubbish often turns out to be just that, rubbish. We all know that Stephen King quote 'you can't polish a turd', right? Wrong. You can absolutely polish a turd, and you don't even have to roll it in glitter in order to do so either. This is where one of Australia's leading sculptors Hany Armanious comes into the equation - whose brilliantly clever exhibition Stone Soup, currently on show at the Henry Moore Institute, proves Armanious to not only be a talented artist but also a sincere master of trickery, concealed in the hard, cold fact that his show is full of rubbish... except, it isn't rubbish at all.

Marking the reopening of the Henry Moore Institute following the first major refurbishment in its 30-year history, Armanious' show - which also doubles up as the most significant collection of his work in a European gallery to date - touches on the four essential pillars of modern sculpture: form, colour, composition and texture. Objects spanning three rooms range from painting rollers to crunchy dry autumn leaves to an endless stream of used wax candles. There are hairbands, plastic screw bottle caps, a ball of used tinfoil and even an Amethyst Crystal is thrown into the mix. A bark of a tree is turned upside down as is a picture frame which is placed neatly on the floor. But why are all these objects lumped together? And, more importantly, what do they all have in common?

At first glance, it's not entirely clear what you're looking at until it's explained that everything in the room is a cast of a previously-discarded object, be it a chair, egg carton, hair band or even a life-size table. And when we say everything we mean everything. If the meaning of art and its existence was reduced to a game of magic, Armanious is committing the ultimate act of sorcery.

'Everything is cast from the same resin material so it involves the same process of making a liquid silicone mould' notes Armanious in his introduction to press. 'It’s a very fine mould and the resin is clear so the colour isn’t mixed into the resin before it’s cast and so when it comes out of the mould it's complete, there’s no finishing required.' The mould Armanious is referring to is where his carefully crafted - or should I say sculpted - magic begins, creating a product made exclusively from pigmented Polyurethane Resin; a material that has lent itself to absolutely everything in this room, regardless of how different each work looks in weight and texture. 'Physically, it’s incredible and that’s part of the fun: it’s a very craft-based approach, but that’s not enough in itself', Armanious warns. 'These are the conventions of art, there’s nothing subversive about it. I think it’s incredibly conventional.'

As for how Armanious chooses which objects to cast, it's not exactly a process of total randomness, but it's also not given too much thought by the artist, either. 'Usually, things kind of just appear to me', Armanious divulges. 'I don’t really go searching for what to cast. Often, it’s a case of i’ve walked past an object for a long time and haven’t really paid attention and then one day I wake up to it - these are the objects that inform my art, they decide when they speak to me, not the other way round'. Such a way of working means Armanious only makes sure objects he has a strange affinity to are included, even if you see nothing more than a bunch of used candles and dirty tables, original meanings implied by the existence of such objects are stripped bare and turned anew; an undertaking that is the most natural thing in the world for Armanious, not least because of his artist background, but his geological one.

'At six years old, I moved from Australia to Egypt' notes Armanious - a fact repeated in the exhibition's press release and also made known by the head of the Henry Moore Institute, Laurence Sillars, in his introduction. 'The move lead him to speak of his experience of a cultural shift that required him to relearn the world through its material language, as much as its spoken one', confirms Sillars. Meaning, in short, Armanious has become some sort of an expert in reading objects - acquiring meaning as well as interpreting it on his own accord. Such a stringent and meticulous casting process that's so integral to the artist's work means that each starting subject is freed from all original meaning, moving from one existence into another. It's an obvious conclusion to come to but for the sake of realisation: Armanious' work is living proof anything can be art, you just need 'another way of seeing the world', the artist confirms. 'And, ultimately, a good sense of fun. This work is for pleasure, it's to be enjoyed. I really don't have anything more to say other than that'.

Hany Armanious: Stone Soup is open to the public at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds until 3 November.