CA Ryan West Yorkshire, United Kingdom

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CA Ryan began their practice in 2020, a year marked at the outset by ferocious wildfires in Australia. The artistic identity of CA Ryan is intended to be a sacrificial one—the canary in the mine, registering the impending threat.

This is the vision of CA Ryan: The climate emergency is real, and it is happening now. Its outcomes are brutal and difficult to predict. It threatens all life, not only human life. The crisis manifests itself in various deadly forms: rising seas, floods, cyclones, droughts, and fires. Human-made structures look fragile in the face of such forces. Ryan's work includes a series of mixed-media drawings using second-hand materials, e.g. inherited watercolour paper and paints. The paper is a vulnerable surface that can be doused, burned, scratched, marked, cut, and then stitched back together. There are also small sculptural works: objects made out of trash found on the street and reclaimed into artworks; and the Erasables – small figures in a foetal position, crudely carved out of erasers.