On 4 July 1785, Edinburgh-native James Hutton read from his book ‘Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe’ at a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. This work became the foundation of modern geology and so Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery seems a perfect home for Damián Ortega’s series of clay sculptures that form his current solo exhibition ‘States of Time’. The works in the exhibition mark a departure from Ortega’s recent works such as ‘Cosmic Thing’ – an installation comprised of suspended car parts. In ‘States of Time’, rather than seeing found, industrial fragments, we see a collection of handmade objects whose structure appears to have been compromised by erosion or conjured by the wind.

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