Tom Hardwick-Allan

The works in Tom Hardwick-Allan’s current exhibition at South Parade are exact reflections of its title, ‘Low Relief and Foil’: a foil is both the trail that a hunted animal leaves as it passes through its environment and a plot device by which a character is defined by its inverse.

- Hatty Nestor

The show comprises several new cast-iron reliefs, made by pressing carved wood into petrol-rich sand — a method called imprinting — before pouring melted-down car brake discs into this mould. During the period in which the artist made these works, his father and grandmother were injured when they were hit by a car that failed to brake. This intersection of family, coincidence and materiality reappear throughout the exhibition, lending a sense of haunting to the works on display.