Blizzard by siblings Jacob and Florence Dwyer is a collaborative installation in which Jacob presents his recent audio drama, Tom’s House, alongside a series of ceramic sculptures made in response by Florence.

Tom’s House, follows the diaristic meanderings of a man who has entered the empty house of an old friend. As he wanders around the creaky Tudor cottage—making cups of tea, rearranging CD collections, and zoning in on the minutiae of domestic space—he ruminates on ideas of emotional intimacy. The sculptures, created in response to the audio, take their formal departure from a fireback: a cast iron slab that sits at the back of a fireplace, designed to protect the bricks of a building from fire while also radiating heat back into the room. The spoken words and sculpted imagery warp in alignment to open up ideas surrounding birth, death, friendship and grief.

In the words of Caitlin Merrett King, who responded to the installation’s first presentation at David Dale Gallery (Glasgow): “Stagnant domestic debris from Tom’s house appears as apotropaic algae on the surfaces of Florence’s firebacks: beads, years, red fowers and other talismanic objects that have long been edited out of Jacob’s script –– mutating versions of which were sent to Florence on a monthly basis over the past year –– sink to the bottom. In Medieval pottery, copper pipe flings were mixed into glazes to make a rich emerald green, as Florence emulates on the frebacks’ swampy surfaces. There’s a subtle and satisfying nudge wink here that even the glaze of the works contains the spirit of a conduit. In [Blizzard], we are passing through, or passing over, but always going deeper underground. The siblings Dwyer have created room within a room within a room; a place where time stands still and we might still find Tom sinking slowly into his bed like the yellow yolk oozing down his chin.”

Tom’s House can be experienced in full on Bandcamp.