so i settled into taking the day off and not thinking about the residency or the studio, a friday of cleaning and listening to very old music on a cd player.
by lunch time i was seemingly free of thoughts all critical and creative.
that was the case until i found a nut. not a brazil or hazel. no this one was big. i was given it or found it and thought i’d hang onto it. hang on for why though. i don’t know, sometimes i find it easier to take the item with me, rather than leave it abandoned for some one else to take responsibility for it. do i feel that by taking it from that place the item will not be destined for a container of other rejected and abandoned items. it’s that’s the case i am obseesive about not throwing anything away as a signifier of it’s end of useful ness ness. no, not me.
although when looking at the nut, do i remember where and why i have it. it’s quite large, industrial would be a good descriptive word for it. i took a picture of it, i’ve still got the device from the studio to play with. having taken the picture, can i now throw it away or must i continue to retain the item from disposal, as i don’t see what else the item can be good for.
i looked at the picture of the nut, it’s documentative of the nut. the context of why and where and when i came to have it in my possession is no longer part of the item, i’ve created a document of the nut in a moment, it was easy and quick and i now now a digital cast of the item.
so with the cast i start to play. the device has playful filters and settings. i play and look and decide for myself which one of the processed casts i prefer the look of. i create another file, a copy of the cast which is an abstract of the first. i have srtipped all of the previous context away from the item. i have an opportunity to add new context to the new cast by applying a name, a description, of what the item is. i could grab anything from anywhere to describe the item, however when talking about the description that would not be a very long conversation. i acknowledge that i can reference the abandoned context to give meaningful context to the newly made cast.
in my mind i now have created a memorial for the nut, that through it’s new cast, i can talk about in the future. the item has had something meaningful applied to it so that when i finally have to discard the item a cast of it remains.
i think back to the studio. the collection of abandoned items, what of their contexts, what of their casts, what of their meaningful ends and i am of course assuming that they are abandoned.
dam, it’s all becoming about storey and context. that’s not visual is it, well it is, visual words, formal widely understood language. visual language is a code and the viewer will draw on their own decoding skills and resources to determine what the piece says. what if the work is a painting with colour strewn around the space in a manner that only the applier can understand, what then? me the viewer will look at the strewn pigment and be left with hopeful ness ness that something inside is triggered. at the moment of giving up, the back up of course is our widely understood communication method, words.
if words are so powerful, where does visual communication stand if the pigment says nothing?
oh !!!!
and there’s the moment.
there’s the beauty.
just because strewn pigment evokes very little in me, it cannot be assumed that the rest of those intentionally viewing it, will have a similar reaction.
