Essay for Selina Foote's show 'Fire Riot Meat' at Newcall

An early attempt.

When I was a child I tried once to capture the image of a flower. Casting across the yard I sought the most vivid punctuation, a small mark of glory. In the shadows attested itself just such a colourful defiance, soon snatched up.

Emulating actions observed somewhere previously I prepared a heavy tome and two leaves of paper, placed the flower between the leaves and closed the case. Having never seen the results of this process I had presumed that the object of the undertaking was to translate directly the image of the flower from the actual article to the paper. I had thought that the flower would reproduce itself in death, leaving its legacy in perfect reproduction.

I was dismayed then, upon opening the book several weeks later to find a flattened ochre flower and a pale pastiche of colours soaked into the white sheets. Where a petal had lain red, it’s remnant an almost-green brown. Its ghosted fragrance released and risen the second surprise, a thin but accurate trace of the flower in life. While the flower had held onto its hue unto death, it seemed I had caught its bouquet.

The scent of the flower is the thing it willingly projects, the part of itself that is cast out in a carefree dance of emancipation, particles suspended in the air to entice sentience to company. Pause the world at any given moment and witness a billion lines of smoky enquiry.

In my attempt to take the image of the flower, I had instead received only that which the flower had already decided to relinquish. It was an early challenge to my presumed right to take an image from the world. What I had thought of as a concise vivid object to be chosen and framed revealed itself as a complicated and open realm of revelation and obscurity.

2009