Hard to believe we’re in the final week of the year.

But that’s what time does, it just keeps rolling, and a new art installation in Manchester, England has an interesting way of showing the effects of time.

It’s a gallery dedicated to rust!

via GIPHY

As Hyperallergic reported recently, “Rust: The Art Gallery” is the work of artist Stephen Raw.

As a teenager, Raw liked to collect and photograph rusted objects – he was fascinated with how, with enough time, a silver metal object could turn orange, red, brown, sometimes even bluish.

Rust could give even the most standard objects an artistic quality.

A half century later, Raw decided he had enough objects to show them to the public.

And he wanted to be clear that the gallery doesn’t just include random items with rust on them.

He didn’t stop by a junkyard and pick up old car hoods and call it art.

Raw has collected and curated specific objects that really show how rusting and weathering can transform something.

It helps that he’s been taking family vacations on a Scottish island where items can sit in the elements for decades.

At this gallery, visitors are not only allowed to touch the art, they’re encouraged to do it – after all, that’s part of the weathering process.

If a piece of rusted metal comes off, Raw picks it up and puts it in a bag, where it will become, as he calls it, “a poetic example of entropy.”

The art in the rust gallery deteriorates over long stretches of time.

Two French artists have made some art that didn’t last nearly that long, but it went out with a bang.

“Affiches Artifices” is a set of geometric shapes on paper, with the shapes are made of flammable material and the paper is fire-resistant.

When they set matches to the art, the flames take a predetermined route through the geometric shapes.

They look like mini fireworks shows on paper.

This Gallery Is Dedicated to the Aesthetic Joys of Rust (Hyperallergic)

Incendiary poster series creates its designs with special pyrotechnic powder (Creativeboom)

Our show never gets rusty and that’s because of our Patreon backers

Photo by Georgie Sharp via Flickr/Creative Commons