RHYS HIMSWORTH: MENHIR

Welsh artist Rhys Himsworth works across painting, print, sculpture, and digital fabrication, developing a material practice rooted in the transformation of electronic waste. His work examines the relationship between geological extraction and technological production, tracing how minerals embedded in the earth are reconfigured into the devices that structure everyday life.

Titled Menhir, a term referring to standing monolithic stones erected across Neolithic landscapes, the exhibition draws on objects that persist beyond the conditions of their making. Found across cultures, these structures remain as markers of ritual and belief, yet their meanings often remain unclear. Himsworth approaches the exhibition through this ambiguity, positioning the works between the scientific and the symbolic.

The exhibition will consist primarily of CNC-milled panels alongside a small number of sculptural forms. Shredded electronic waste, such as circuit boards, LCD screens and hard drives, are combined with resin to form dense composite blocks, which are then carved using three-, five-, and six-axis CNC processes. Machining operates here as a form of excavation, cutting into the material to reveal its internal structure.

The panel works position themselves in relation to painting, initially resembling Modernist monochrome abstraction, whilst the sculptural works recall the earthworks of Land Art. Their surfaces are carved from source imagery derived from metamorphic stones such as marble and slate, translating patterns of veining into tool-paths that erode the surface. As the material is cut away, stratified layers of embedded waste are exposed. The process draws on geological weathering, where variations in density determine how a surface is worn over time, here reconstructed through digital means.

Fragments of electronic waste become analogous to sediment, compressing extended chains of extraction, manufacture, and disposal into a single material surface. The works reference geological diagrams—cross-sections, strata, and topographical mapping—while functioning as constructed objects in their own right.

Across the exhibition, the repeated transformation of material introduces a ritual dimension, in which technological debris is returned to a form that recalls its geological origin. In this context, the works can be understood as speculative monoliths, objects that operate as both records of contemporary production and as remnants of a future archaeology.