Growler focuses on the quantum qualities of glass.

Perhaps surprisingly, glass and quantum particles like the electron have uncanny similarities. They both melt and become fluid at certain temperatures. Glass melts when it is around 1500 degrees Celsius, and quantum particles become wave-like when they are at absolute zero (-273 degrees Celsius).

Whereas both glass and quantum particles become fixed and rigid in our everyday Newtonian world.

This sculpture explores this apparent state of in-between, where the glass assumes a slimy quality, becoming a tactile, ever-changing intervention in the gallery space.

Slime is a recurring motif in Heaney’s practice, symbolizing the unstable nature of reality and the monstrous nature of self. It is also an entangling substance between all life forms. As Susanne Wedlich notes in her book The Natural History of Slime, there is no form of multicellular life that does not contain some sort of slime, mucus, or viscous gel.

In combination with the surrounding projected video works, Heaney sees the clear sculpture as a petri dish for entangling images of the environment.

By working with glass and testing the physical limitations of the medium, Heaney is proposing a new interpretation of Lewis Carroll’s iconic Through the Looking-Glass (1871). What if the fantastic world described by Carroll, where everything is upside down—even logic—instead describes the quantum world?