Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
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
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
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Matters.
Corporeal, social, theoretical; matters are always about context. In the universe, there are only ever temporary pools of gravity, where an object/subject can acquire weight. Material values fluctuate according to the breadth of interstice between availability and need and as such, any given material will most likely spend 99.999999% of its cohabitant life alongside judgemental beings as worthless, and 0.000001% as supreme commodity.
Notions of value are notions of gravity. Every matter; every material has latent energy. Art at its best can transform latent gravitational matters into nascent social ones. This comes about by deferring meaning from singular occurrences or arrangements to spaces of plurality. Corporeal, social, theoretical: catalytic agents implicate their surroundings.
Reading into matters means reading a city through the universe. Using Sherlock Holmes’ deduction technique, you can tell what something is by what it isn’t. A rock isn’t a rumour, and yet the striking thing is that every material is potentially analogous to an infinite array of ideas.
A valuable thing happens when the catalytic agent/object/situation becomes a mirror, and you realise that it is your own temporary pool of gravity that is generating all the weight around you, and that the agent of change is never an estranged object, but is always you, latent, nascent.
It is my privilege to cast proxy agents into any public space, and I don’t take this privilege lightly.
Corporeal, social, theoretical; matters are always about context. In the universe, there are only ever temporary pools of gravity, where an object/subject can acquire weight. Material values fluctuate according to the breadth of interstice between availability and need and as such, any given material will most likely spend 99.999999% of its cohabitant life alongside judgemental beings as worthless, and 0.000001% as supreme commodity.
Notions of value are notions of gravity. Every matter; every material has latent energy. Art at its best can transform latent gravitational matters into nascent social ones. This comes about by deferring meaning from singular occurrences or arrangements to spaces of plurality. Corporeal, social, theoretical: catalytic agents implicate their surroundings.
Reading into matters means reading a city through the universe. Using Sherlock Holmes’ deduction technique, you can tell what something is by what it isn’t. A rock isn’t a rumour, and yet the striking thing is that every material is potentially analogous to an infinite array of ideas.
A valuable thing happens when the catalytic agent/object/situation becomes a mirror, and you realise that it is your own temporary pool of gravity that is generating all the weight around you, and that the agent of change is never an estranged object, but is always you, latent, nascent.
It is my privilege to cast proxy agents into any public space, and I don’t take this privilege lightly.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
MFA Exhibition 2009
In the background is an untitled work by Boris Dornbusch.
Last photo courtesy of Agnes at The Paint and Bake
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