“We are not separate from this Earth; we are a part of it, whether we fully feel it in our bodies yet or not.”
― Sharon Blackie, If Women Rose Rooted.
My final week at AirSpace concentrated thoughts and investigations from the previous 3 weeks. This residency has given me the gift of working with wonderful and gifted artists. Phill Phelps captured the sonic portrait of the building and revealed sonic frequencies normally inaudible to our human ears. By shifting time and speed these traces become visible, forcing a reconsideration of our relationship with the sonic world around us. This unique sonic portrait will play within the gallery space for the duration of the final presentation of work.
Deb Bell revealed magnetic energy within the building during a dowsing event in the gallery. Finding the centre point of a subterranean spring running directly under the gallery floor was a revelation and has become the line of sight for the large floor drawing which is slowly revealing itself and creeping across through the space.
I have spent a large amount of time working with paper and drawn line over the last year. Working on and across different surfaces, paper, films and transparencies, thinking about sections of drawings where the lines draw me to connect with them.
The rhythm and flow of this floor drawing is responding to the floor and the light as it shifts during the day. The imagery has been taken directly from the stone lithograph drawings created in the space at the beginning of the residency. Using the stone surface to record the traces of the building, the temperature, the humidity, unseen/unheard frequencies vibrating around us as well as the physical gesture of my hand.
I also bought the hand cut panels of Measuring States back into the gallery this week, having discussed the potential of including them in the final presentation and I wanted to see how their presence changed the space.
These panels were created right at the beginning of the project; initially two panels were cut to explore how we might read a drawing, which has been created through erasure. A third larger panel was cut to continue and extend this idea further pushing the papers material integrity as the voids became more complex. These panels will sit in direct conversation with the floor drawing disrupting the line of sight and light within the gallery.
Throughout the project conversations have informed and shaped my thinking. I am extremely grateful to everyone who has contributed to the research and supported me over the last couple of years. Part of the funding from ACE has provided me with the opportunity to produce a small publication to help document and bring together this research. Wonderful contributions by Penny Florence and Anna Souter provide written responses to my artworks and waking journeys.
I am delighted that this publication is now available to view online, printed copies will be available during the exhibition at AirSpace. Click on this link to open in your browser – porosity.