Andres Bedoya

Andres Bedoya describes his practice as object and material-based, without relying on conventional terms of sculpture, installation and drawing. Bedoya uses everyday and precious, lasting and ephemeral materials, such as leather, bronze, bananas, orange peels, and scrap metal, to navigate the rich history of the Andean region of Latin America. Treating the objects and their physical as means of storytelling, Bedoya explores the origins of beliefs, rituals and histories from an abstract, biographical perspective. His works depict old-fashioned wooden tables underneath which are attached black, old bananas, thin metal cut into scales of armour, leather sheet pierced by bronze needles. During his 2015 residency at Gasworks, Deboya was studying traditional Victorian hair art, implementing hair into his own practice and continuing to explore the meaningful and historical potential of material objects. The artist’s practice eloquently merges history and the present, cultural and personal remembrance, permanence and decay, beauty and tension, creating unexpected, piercing narratives of memory, loss, conflict and family.