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Awst & Walther are a husband and wife team who create multi-disciplinary art works which range from building a huge wall of melting ice outside the German Embassy to a performance in which the movements of two nude figures wearing ancient Grecian helmets twitch at a grey curtain   Their latest exhibition, Components, at the Hannah Barry Gallery, brings together four years of sculpture and performance work, shedding light on ongoing thematic preoccupations and material attitudes in the artists’ work This group of works reveals an acute fascination with corporeality, temporality and spatiality, and the experiences and situations that occur from different combinations of these aspects   The artists employ an array of unconventional and alternately austere and sumptuous materials – gelatine, glass, ice, gold, feathers, tar, concrete, neon, are all used in making painting, sculpture and performance to explore our attitudes towards beauty and human behaviour Theirs is a collaborative endeavour focused on creating knowledge and meaning, towards a better understanding of our world   Manon Awst (b 1983, Wales) and Benjamin Walther (b1978, Dresden), have shown at Junge Kunst (Wolfsburg), Kunstraum Aarau (Switzerland), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Nassauischer Kunstverein (Wiesbaden), Cass Sculpture Foundation (Goodwood) and the National Museum of Wales (Cardiff) Here, they answer questions put to them by journalist and critic Francesca Gavin     APPLE Explain the motif of the apple in your work We like the ambivalence surrounding the apple – it represents an act of corruption, the fall from grace, but also the beginning of civilisation and the birth of love We used it once in our piece Temptation where it was placed next to a hand grenade Both objects are golden BERLIN How does it influence the content and aesthetic of your work? Berlin is fragmented through its history There are breaks and interruptions that make it unique We feel challenged by that Aesthetically, we love its dark, stark, cold side – we can relate to this COLLABORATION Tell me about your working processes We admire each other and like spending time together From the moment we met we had this need to make things together – it felt very natural Being in the studio every day is important