Order is both that which is given in things as their inner law, the secret network according to which, in a manner of speaking, they look at each other, and that which exists only through the grid of a look, of an attention, of a language; and it is only in the blank spaces of this grid that it shows itself in depth as already being there, awaiting in silence the moment of its enunciation.
- Michel Foucault, from the preface to Les mots et les Choses, 1966.
We impos e grids and units of measurement on what is organic and fluid in an attempt to bound and thereby control it. This exhibition explores , in four series of works , my interest in the continuing human activity that exis ts in the inters tices and blank spaces between these organic and man-made divisions .
We experience the linear progression of an external digital time and a more personal, inner sense of time as a circle constantly repeating itself in which layers of experience remain hidden or resurface as memory at any given moment of our lives. The images in the series Syzygy (by definition, a random conjunction or opposition of bodies as they pass each other in space) are made up of floating forms which, like memory, combine for a time then separate to ever changing possibilities.
The series Skin further questions the nature of identity. Cast from the same mold, these variations suggest fragility and permanence, and ask to what extent surface can be accepted as defining or bounding identity.
Leather, like skin, carries a record of past experiences on its surface. The series Clap uses old leather gloves stretched over the wax cast of a hand, and is like a series of three-dimensional snap-shots . We take endless photographs in an attempt to preserve what is passing, yet the same photographs often create an equally strong sense that what we are trying to keep has gone. These hollow gloves evoke both human absence and presence. Like photographs , they freeze momentary gestures to a doubtful permanence.
The Greenwich Mean Time series uses simplified one point perspective to represent the divisions of time and space that surround us. Having been removed from a s pecific time and place the figures now exist in a fabricated space, frozen in the random combination of a moment. This work ques tions the relationship between context and meaning, and alludes to the relative value of the structures we allow to order and define the way in which we think and live.
PAMELA RATAJ Melbourne 2008
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