An Excerpt from the exhibition Text I’ve just written for Ben Jeans Houghton’s
On ARKA
1st – 14th April
Moving Gallery
67b Westgate road, Newcastle city centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
” What’s in a name?
If we were to trace the etymological roots of the title On Arka we may be led to believe that it belongs to two (diametrically opposed but simultaneous) modes of being. The ‘ARK’ (minus the ‘A’) is a concrete noun ascribed to a place of refuge or security. It resonates to the biblical portrayal of Noah’s Ark, the boat built by Noah to preserve himself, his family and two of every animal from the floods (Genesis 6:19). Or the mythical Ark of the covenant, the vessel said to have been constructed after the commandment of God, as a container for the Stone Tablets onto which Moses carved the ten commandments (Exodus 25:10). But ARKA does not belong to the concrete, nor the figurative. While it acknowledges the parallels, the insertion of the abstracting ‘A’, ruptures the implicit meaning, making the title ambiguous and metaphysical. It is important to consider because the poetic title of the show prefigures the work which embodies a similar duality; a dialectic of infinite possibilities oscillating between the literal and the metaphorical, flux and inertia, and between existence and oblivion…”
http://www.benjeanshoughton.co.uk/
http://holeeditions.blogspot.com/2010/03/ben-jeans-houghton-on-arka.html
