Tilted back, mouth open in silent agony Pollock’s skull has been heated to such an extreme that the metal welds lose definition as they fuse, and the white powder coating becomes set as lava-like bubbling.

Pollock’s skulls speak of how human existence is careering towards a tipping point, as the world is slowly burning: where, even when that speed is causing bone to melt (at 1670 ℃), we still carry on without a care, with gritted teeth and a grin. He talks about reaching a stage when our humanity is stripped away and we revert to our base selves, without guile and wit, language and tools, and where, once the inner animal is exposed, we will once again have to scrabble and scrape and fight tooth and nail for everything we have.

The skulls are made from aluminium, parts sand casted from melted polystyrene and epoxy clay, together with other scrap aluminium sections welded to the point of becoming molten. Pollock then scratches and scores the aluminium with a plasma cutter (a process that cuts through electrically conductive materials by means of an accelerated jet of hot plasma): a process that is full of chaos and energy.

Jesse Pollock (b.1993, Gillingham, Kent, England) studied BA Illustration, Camberwell College of Arts and BTEC Diploma, University of Creative Arts. Recent exhibitions include: State of Play, Brooke Benington & Canary Wharf (2022); Sculpture in the City, London (2022); Dream Weavers, Grove Collective, London (2022); Pink Gallery, Superzoom, Miami (2021); Sit Right Here And Watch The World Burn, Selfridges, London (2021); Arcadia, Bold Tendencies, London (2021); Nourishment ii, VO Curations, London (2020); La Totale 2020, Boissy-le-Chatel, France (2020); A Land of Incomparable Beauty, Collective Ending, London (2020); Contemporary Sculpture Fulmer 2020, Brooke Bennington, Fulmer (2020); The Garden of England, Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2020); Dieu To Old England, The Kids Are Alright, Choi and Lager, Cologne (2019); Super Zoom, curated by Ferdinand Gros, Paris (2019); Power of Ten, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles (2019); Squeeze Hard Enough It Might Just Pop! Hannah Barry Gallery, London, (2018).