Tom Giwi

Tectonics seeks to encapsulate the creative experience—the challenge of expressing abstract thoughts and emotions that often feel too vast to contain. Many creatives attempt to bring the depths of their inner world to the surface through their work, yet the process is never truly complete. As one piece reaches its conclusion, those depths shift, and the need to create begins again.

This work explores this perpetual motion, drawing inspiration from seismic diagrams that predict earthquakes caused by shifting tectonic plates. Just as these natural forces shape the earth, the creative force is immense, unpredictable, and beyond our control.

Engraved and printed onto clear acrylic, the piece invites light, reflection, and movement to continuously interact with it—ensuring it remains in flux, never static, and always evolving. Split into four panels, with three ‘plates’ engraved onto the surface, Tectonics embodies the idea that an artwork or artefact is not a singular whole but a convergence of smaller ideas developing over time. This is further emphasised by the printed textures, derived from scans of test pieces created before the final work—traces of the creative process embedded within the piece itself.

Singular moments of chaos, turbulence and destruction. Materials shredded to pieces, shifting. Perhaps in the process of becoming something new.

 'An Every Day Thing' celebrates the imperfections in objects, and the beauty surfaces and materials garner over time. An object's life does not end when it has fulfilled its original purpose. It also questions the idea of the 'everyday thing'. Objects hold completely different meanings to different people. To those (artists and crafts-people) who seek to find beauty and utility in everything; the 'everyday thing' is without limit The scrapped printing plate, an old palette, off-cuts and broken machinery. All of it has a potential purpose and a beauty either already visible or waiting to be revealed.