Set against a dark backdrop of laurel, the sun falls upon the fungal extrusions of The Puff of the Pastry enriching the swirls of colour that run through it like sauce through ice cream. Cavities puncture its layers allowing the sunlight through, casting dappled shade upon the levels below, echoing the woodland canopy above. The sculpture is a conversation between industrialised processes and natural forms that draw us into its internal spaces where voids and surfaces are of equal concern.

Working with a palette of materials that allows him to build in reverse, Andrew Sabin doesn’t get to see what he’s created until it is revealed at the end of his multilayered process. Made of pigmented concrete and steel - grown one section at a time - The Puff of the Pastry was built outside-in from pastry marge. This industrial material, designed to be ultra plastic for lamination between layers of dough in the creation of puff pastry, allows Sabin to sculpt the void. Afterwards, concrete is poured into the empty spaces and finally, the margarine is washed away to reveal the final form. Both the process and the form have geological echos; systems of caves and subterranean chambers carved from rock by the action of wind or water, at once timeless and an expression of the passing of time.

We spoke with Andrew Sabin to discuss the development of his practice, and his unusual and fascinating processes. We discuss his interest and exploration of the void and interior space, and how an early grounding in pottery helped shape his onward practice.

You began your career as a potter, I wonder if this early grounding in making vessels has a connection with your recently expressed concern with internal space within your sculptures? 

Yes, I was an obsessive potter from the age of 13 until I was 20 when I first went to art school.  I had a great teacher, a Chinese Malaysian called Po Chap Yeap.  The period taught me a great deal that I have drawn on continuously throughout my years as a sculptor.  Yeap and I would analyse pots by examining them in section.  I’d throw him a vase and then draw the wire half way across the wheel, lift it vertically, and cut away half the pot revealing a section which we would scrutinise in fine detail looking for strengths and weaknesses.  You have asked me about vessels and it is true that my pots were containers of space (often occupied by soup or spaghetti carbonara)  but my interest in the interior life of matter was certainly reinforced by this practice of looking inside the substance of the form rather than the space it enclosed.

Could you start by telling us about the rather extraordinary process by which you make sculptures such as The Puff of the Pastry, exhibited at Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer?

My love of making pots was displaced by another amazing process.  In screen printing a permeable membrane is blocked in parts by a substance that can be washed away.  The print is made layer by layer pushing ink through the permeable parts of the screen onto the paper.  Then more blockages are added or subtracted and further layers of ink are pressed through the remaining parts of the screen gradually building up the image.  The process that I have been developing has many elements of screen printing and quite a few from the pottery.  In recent years the material I can wash away that also blocks the screen (or occupies the space) is margarine in one form or another.  If, for example, I wanted to make a form in concrete like a large soup bowl I would make it upside down first forming the inside surface of the bowl as a solid lump of margarine on a table.  Then I would form the lip, transitioning from the inside to the outside surface from which I would continue a margarine wall around the core leaving a void to be filled with liquid concrete.  When cured, I would free the bowl from the marge, washing its surface with hot water.  So, in short, the surface of the marge is the negative surface of the object and the interior of the marge is empty space around the finished form.  If I wanted to puncture the bowl to make a sieve like object I would connect the inner surface to the outer surface with hole shaped plugs of margarine which would also be removed as described.

In The Puff of the Pastry I began with making a table shaped vessel (void), punctured it with hole shaped pieces of margarine, and then filled the void with concrete. As in screen printing the process allows me to wash the space blocker away and repeat the procedure adding layer upon layer of form and surface information.

In contrast to your synthetic and rather architectural  choice of materials (concrete, steel and in the past, expanding foam), when considering one of your sculptures it is in invariably natural associations that come to mind - coral, fungus, lichen, weathered rock etc - is this a conscious juxtaposition or a convergence of various interests?

I’m a soft subjectivist (there are external actualities but necessarily seen through my complicated set of filters).  I am very interested in natural forms and processes but I find it less confused to express my thoughts and observations about them in a synthetic palette of materials rather than to simply use the source matter (gnarly tree stumps, worm punctured clay, dazzling sea shells, eroded rocks etc).  There was a period of work in late 80’s when I would coat naturally arising forms (mostly tree parts) with thick layers of plastic and work around it in that way.  One way or other it has always been about looking at the world and constructing sculptures with filters in mind. I like seeing through things (gauzes, holes, cracks, films, ice, mist, clouds, hot air, water, the camera lens, the eye, the personal experience) and enjoying what the filter has done to the light that pushes through them to me. I like seeing natural-type forms rendered in the most obviously man-made materials.  In answer to your question it is, indeed, a very conscious juxtaposition and one that I shall continue to play with.