The Night and the First Sculpture (2024) is Alexander Mourant’s first publication, containing sculptures, performances and photographs, made on his family farm. Responding, firstly, to Robert Smithson’s Island of Broken Glass (1969/1970), the work evolved through playful, material-led exploration, to question the metaphysical nature of images and concepts of time, space and place.

Made under the cover of night, Mourant’s process was one of metaphorically imbuing and assembling agricultural materials – glass, wood and stone – in an attempt to materialise his own theories, often referencing novels, non-fiction, autobiography and mythologies. As Alan Huck writes, “The approach that Mourant takes is not unlike what Wordsworth proclaimed was the task of the poet – to build up the greatest things from the least suggestions.” 

In this work, the artist’s ad hoc farm-studio performs, becoming a stage or a theatre for the conjuring of images. This ‘black box’ hints at the origins of photography, and elevates the camera to the status of architecture; one seemingly infinite, with a void-like substance and hard to define scale. Here, the night transforms into a character, encapsulating desire, the unknown and the artist’s pursuit of knowledge.

At its heart, The Night and the First Sculpture proposes how images and stories may form, erode and reshape themselves over time. Mourant continues to draw upon research into Conceptualism’s cognate movements – Land Art, Arte Povera and Mono-ha – to help expand or ‘push’ our understanding of the image world.

The Night and the First Sculpture includes an introduction by Alan Huck, and an in conversation with Eugenie Shinkle and Alexander Mourant.