Installations

Hold

An installation by Russell Mills and Petulia Mattioli
The Caveau, Palazzo delle Papesse (Centro Arte Contemporanea), Siena, Italy, 2004

A collaborative installation between English multimedia artist Russell Mills and Italian video artist Petulia Mattioli created specifically for the former Bank of Italy vaults in the medieval Palazzo delle Papesse (Centro Arte Contemporanea) in the heart of Siena.

Mills has created thirty two "thought engines" (object poems) to be displayed on the shelves within the grilled bank vault cabinets. Rectified everyday objects have been transformed into intriguing and charged carriers of metaphoric potential . Mattioli's film projected down onto a mound of quartz salt crystals examines human moments of contemplation, revelation and discovery.

This project also features a new collaborative ceaselessly evolving soundscape mixed by Eraldo Bernocchi includes contributions by Mills with Michael Fearon, Bill Laswell, Harold Budd and the Ethiopian singer Gigi.

//Gallery//

“Thought engines”
The "object poems" or "thought engines" will be like "figures of speech", not the common simile or metaphor (the substitution of like for like) but more like metonymy (substitution of an attribute for a holder. e.g. a crown for a king). Some will act as a synecdoche (part for whole) for instance an egg shell can refer to or stand for an egg, or for food, or for good living, or for new life and innocence. Some of the relationships suggested in the juxtapositions of the chosen objects will be provocative and nuanced while others may only make sense by demonstrating a kind of collective futility in the face of contemporary media bombardment. Some will elicit ideas of cultural evolution, others may suggest more socio-political metaphors of hope. I hope that these proposed assembled objects will create a sense of both unease and strange familiarity. I want them to walk a fine balance between representation (and illusion) and the material's need to conform to a certain use so as to become, to use Harold Rosenberg's term, "anxious objects". Most need to be old, everyday objects that have been used. They must be familiar and understandable, stained with a patina of time and traces of use, thereby suggesting possible histories. And yet when eased into improbable, enigmatic alliances with other objects, they will become new, suggesting possible futures. Through ambiguity, each juxtaposition would make precise and easy interpretation impossible. Meaning would slide backwards and forwards between the collective (of the assemblage) and the individual (of the meanings and history inherent in the parts) in a manner that is by nature both unstable and subversive. Some will generally be concerned with ideas of preciousness (not necessarily of rare "things"), essentials, fundamental choices and preferences, etc., set against objects that are non-essential. Talismanic, they would act as reminders of certain values, beliefs and hopes that we all share or need to prioritise more than we do. Above all their purpose is to be signifiers of potential, of what might be rather than what is or what has been. They are enabling and transformative.

1) Is
Hat mannequin clad in rust dust.
(The head is the seat of consciousness, the rust dust an example of an almost imperceptible natural chemical process, which informs that consciousness. The work attempts to link the work of the earth, the physical intervention of the artist and the impact of time. It's also about the primacy of process and how materials are also metaphoric signifiers, carriers of ideas to replace linearity or representation. )

2) Nothing is Unstable
Two silver goblets, ash and honey.
(One goblet is bright and half full of honey and a second is tarnished and half full of ashes. The first represents new beginnings birth and promise; the second suggests death and ending. The journey between the two is short. It is very minimal Beckett-like idea. Also with the goblets being half full they are also half-empty and as such they allude to the test to discover if one is a pessimist or an optimist - another Beckettian dilemma.)

3) Doppler
Rural egg carrier, 40 eggs, "Dobby" stones (Thunderstones), string.
(An old, rural egg carrier with 41 holes for eggs, holding only 40 eggs, over which are suspended a series of "Dobby Stones" - stones with naturally formed holes in them, these are also known as “Thunderstones” in some parts of the country. Local to Cumbria where I live, they are believed to "ward off the evil eye" i.e. protects against misfortune. As good luck charms, they are usually hung over cattle stalls or the doorways of people's houses. The egg is the true virgin, an innocent and real, a symbol of new life and new beginnings. Whereas the "Dobby Stone" is symbolic of old superstitions, of foolish, illogical and unfounded myths which tend to confound and stop progress.)

Incubator Series
6 assemblage boxes, each containing a bird's nest. Each nest cradles, protects and nurtures an object of potential, of latent energy.

4) Incubator #1: Loop
Dynamo, bird's nest, plaster, ash, acrylics, varnish in wooden box.
(Dynamo is a container of and source of energy.)

5) Incubator #2: Cardinal
Honeycomb, bird's nest, plaster, ash, acrylics, varnish in wooden box.
(Honey represents immortality, initiation and rebirth. Honey was supposed to impart virility, fertility and vigour and have an aphrodisiac quality. The imagined parthenogenic origin of bees made honey an uncontaminated sacred food. Bees filled the mouths of Homer, Sappho, Pindar and Plato with honey. The honeycomb is symbolic of a perfect societal model, a community that is driven by energy in the production of energy for the good of all.)

6) Incubator #3: Pivot
Rose petals, bird's nest, plaster, ash, acrylics, varnish in wooden box.
(A highly complex symbol; it is ambivalent as both heavenly perfection and earthly passion; the flower is both Time and Eternity, life and death, fertility and virginity. The rose is perfection; completion; the mystery of life, the heart-centre of life; the unknown; beauty; grace; happiness, but also voluptuousness; the passions and is also associated with wine, sensuality and seduction. It typifies silence and secrecy, sub rosa, a rose being hung, or depicted in council chambers to symbolise secrecy and discretion. There are countless other references to the symbology of the rose, these are just a few …
I remember reading long ago of a Roman Emperor, whose name I cannot recall, who held a huge, lavish banquet in a chamber whose ceiling was festooned with rose petals. At a certain time during the proceedings the petals were released to fall down and over the guests, however their bulk and perfume caused the many of the guests to suffocate and die. In this instance the seemingly innocent, beautiful and fragile petals became a weapon, a powerful force, energy.)

7) Incubator #4: Battery
Teeth, bird's nest, plaster, ash, acrylics, varnish in wooden box.
(Teeth are the most enduring part of our bodies and are one of the last parts of our bodies to decay after death. In some primitive initiation ceremonies a tooth was extracted and swallowed as a symbol of death and rebirth (Jason and the Argonauts). Teeth carry DNA information, which is a form of potential energy.)

8) Incubator #5: Fulcrum
Hair, bird's nest, plaster, ash, acrylics, varnish in wooden box.
(Amongst many other interpretations hair symbolises the life force; energy; power of thought; higher powers and inspiration; strength (Samson); devotion; allegiance. Hair, like teeth, is one of the last parts of our bodies to decay after death. Similarly, hair carries DNA information, which is a form of potential energy.)

9) Incubator #6: Charge
Quartz cluster, bird's nest, plaster, ash, acrylics, varnish in wooden box.
(Quartz is a form of energy in the form of condensed light; in some cultures it also represents sperm, the life force, frozen in a crystallised form.)

10) Head
Sanguine drawing on split Cumbrian stone.
(A "cave drawing" in sanguine of a common garden shed, inside a split stone. An invented archaeological find. Here in the UK, the shed is a common ready-made shelter, cheap and usually made of scraps of wood and old doors, an assemblage. A place of refuge and of dreams, it is also symbolic of independence and innovation, a place where individuals, usually of an obsessive nature, explore and develop unique ideas, a laboratory of the possible. For me the shed is a very potent metaphor for all that I do and believe in.)

11) Invisible Visible (Poetry)
Church offertory box and copper wire.
(Poetry makes the invisible visible. This juxtaposition is about shared experiences and insights, which the good creative, open mind can suggest and illuminate more clearly. It is also an homage to the transformative, morally and spiritually enabling capacity of the arts, to poetry in particular, and to creative open thinking in any walk of life. Good poets can create an image of enormity and emotional resonance in a few highly crafted lines of carefully chosen words. With the rare skill of compression and exactitude, a poet (or a musician, visual artist, writer, etc.) can suggest ideas and notions that have the ability to knock one sideways, thereby revealing new ways of looking at the world. The Church offertory box is a receptacle for collecting money donations, given freely to a commonly agreed cause; it is an object for sharing. The copper wires entering and leaving its thin opening are conductors of energy, offering and exchanging potential in a constant flow. )

12) Soul or Smoke?
Bird’s wings, spray paint, acrylics and emulsion.
(A collection of tarnished gold wings line the shelf whilst a pair of white wings is suspended above. This is an alchemical allusion to aspiring to the ultimate goal, the philosopher's stone or gold, which is of course impossible. It also refers to the myth of Icarus.)

13) All the Lost Sounds
Headphones and “Angel’s Hair” (Christmas mist).
(A meditative piece, which partly dwells on the speculative “what if?” proposition. In this instance I was thinking about two unknowns scenarios, one which I would be curious to experience and another which I would dread. One involves the possibility of hearing the sound of natural processes in flux, such as clouds moving, unfolding and shifting almost imperceptibly. The other is the dreadful thought of all the everyday sounds of my past, sounds that remind me of places, people and events that have been eventful or life changing, but have disappeared or I can no longer can hear. Slow, old prop-driven cargo planes droning through the sky, steam trains and newspaper sellers barking the headlines on street corners. All these sounds have either already disappeared from our contemporary sonic landscapes, or are becoming rarer. Taking the scenario even further and I even imagine the awful possibility of the complete absence of sound.)

14) The Gradual Instant
CDs, rust dust, earth and sand.
(Before the car the horse was the most efficient mode of transportation; before the CD the cassette was King. With every new technological jump we are told with utmost certainty, that information and data will now be absolutely safe, that this radically improved item or that miraculously faster gizmo will last for thousands of years. Whilst some of these innovations and developments are welcome and truly revolutionary, I am slightly cynical and suspicious about our apparent willingness to embrace and glorify every new idea just because it is new. I suspect that new simply translates into novel. I suspect that what is being replaced has not yet fulfilled its potential. We are informed that landfill sites, nuclear power and nuclear waste processing plants are safe and will be for thousands of years. How can anyone be so sure? These CDs, which have been ravaged by being subjected to various processes, such as burial in earth rich in minerals, are now redundant. The absolute certainty of science is always in doubt. The perfection of these CDs has been questioned and proved inadequate and ill founded.)

15) The Dust of Men’s Tears
Hand made wooden attaché case holding a type case containing coal dust, rust dust, earth, sand, ash, poppy seeds, copper filings, iron filings, magnesium, iron sulphate, volcanic sand, gold leaf, mica, turmeric, salt, pollen, cyanide powder, snake skin, acrylics, oils and varnishes.
(This piece came out of a period of research towards an installation for North Tyneside on the North East Coast of England. This area of the UK has traditionally been shaped by its dependence on the sea and consequently has a fine and rich history of fishing and shipbuilding. This link with the sea produced a breed of hard men renowned for their physical prowess, typically macho and intensely proud. The language and dialect of the region, known as “Geordie”, is hard but warm, poetic but direct and has a rare lilting quality that has similarly been shaped by man’s interaction with the sea. However over the past twenty or thirty years the industries that were dependent on the sea have all but disappeared, to be replaced by white and blue collar occupations such as call centres, insurance companies, mail order phone centres. Distinctly indigenous culture has been replaced by the ubiquity of universal, bland commerce that apparently has no correspondence to the area. Paradoxically the region was chosen as the ideal location for such businesses because the Geordie dialect was considered by the majority of people in the UK to be the most welcoming and trustworthy. The Geordie character, which has been formed by man’s interaction with the sea, has now been hijacked to sell mobile phones, insurance policies and bogus holidays. I felt sad about this colonisation and its reverberations and began thinking about the possibility of these hard, proud men being reduced to menial desk bound jobs. Traditionally such men would not cry but I imagined them now doing so, crying for a past destroyed, a way of life lost to so-called progress. These samples of men’s tears are presented as dust, the effects of evaporation and symbolic of the fragility of traditional cultures. Tears are also symbolic of the incorruptible essence of life found through disintegration, decay and suffering. They preserve, conserve and are indestructible and their salts are the last residue of bodies.)

16) Seed To Star
Shovel head, cement, ash, acrylics, oils, emulsion, gold leaf and glitter.
(An old shovelhead painted to suggest a constellation of stars. This refers obliquely to Galileo's radical discoveries and observations and it also suggests a conjoined paradox between the intimate and the infinite; this is a tool made by man for working on and with the land and yet it also carries a message about the heavens. Through contact with the earth and with matter it is tool of regeneration, an enabling and transformative object. The shovel or spade is a masculine symbol and is also representative of Saturn, St Christian and St Phocas.)

17) The Speech of Flint and Air
Violin case, ash, coal, acrylics, oils, gold leaf, glitter and three metal bee emblems.
(Another piece referring to Galileo’s life, work and the impact his findings have had on our understanding of the world. The violin case refers both to his father who was a musician and to Galileo himself, who played the Lute, particularly in his later years. The allusion to music also nods to the idea of the “music of the spheres”, the mathematics of musical intervals and to Walter Pater’s observation that “all the arts aspire to the condition of music”. Coal filling one half of the violin case is carbon, the oldest known and most ubiquitous substance in the universe, the body of stars and planets. Coal also symbolises the hidden, occult powers; burning coal symbolises the alchemical transformation of black into red. One half of the violin case is painted with ash, acrylics, etc., to resemble a night sky, an obvious reference to Galileo. Three scattered tiny metal bee emblems are embedded in this “sky”. These refer to the coat of arms of the family of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini who was elected Pope Urban VIII and who was responsible for Galileo’s subjection to the Inquisition. Galileo escaped the bee’s sting – just! The bee can also be read as symbolising industry, productivity and society.)

18) The Deep Uncertainty of Knowing
Victorian family Bible and razor blades.
(A large Victorian family Bible, its front and back covers embedded with razor blades, making it dangerous even impossible to handle or to open. Again this alludes, in part, to Galileo's achievements and the fear that they instilled in the Catholic Church as well as the ongoing debate between dogma and fact. It is also an attack on all religious dogmas and fundamentalist thinking, which contrary to most of their doctrines, seems to only bring pain, destruction, greed and guilt.)

19) Eclipse
Wooden crucifix, coal dust and painted wooden egg.
(A small black wooden crucifix coated in coal dust – carbon, the material of the stars - and an egg replacing the cruciform Christ. This is another piece that refers to Galileo's discoveries and the conflict they caused with the Catholic Church. It also refers to the differences between religious belief systems and natural phenomena, about the invented myth and the given fact, the analytical and the actual. The egg is the true virgin, an innocent, whereas religion has become increasingly corrupt and corrupting.)

20) Claiming the Heaventree
Rope and sand.
(Like the cord and all bonds, the rope both binds and limits yet provides the possibility of infinite extension and freedom; it can give access to heaven and is associated with rites of passage. Queen Elizabeth I of England, when discussing religions once said that " ... all religions, (except her faith) were but ropes of sand" - therefore useless. The word “Heaventree” is from James Joyce.)

21) Matrix
Three inkpots fused into earth, roots and copper wire.
(The symbology of earth is dense yet is generally understood; the universal genetrix, the Nourisher; the Nurse; as Earth Mother earth is the universal archetype of fecundity, inexhaustible creativity and sustenance. Earth and Heaven are matter and spirit. These three school inkpots, I found in a dig in the garden of the home I had in London. I converted an old Victorian school in Vauxhall, which had started life as an Art School. The inkpots had obviously come from the Victorian school. One is completely embedded in earth and stones, another is also embedded in earth and stones with roots emerging from its base and a third is also embedded in earth and stone with roots emerging from its base and will have tendrils of copper wires shooting from its top spout. (Copper is a conductor of energy). These serve to demonstrate an idea of progressive cultural evolution and again refer to Wordsworth's work and his ideas that put nature at the centre of all we do.)

22) Festina Lente
Clock mechanism, photocopy and wood.
(A clock marked with thirteen hours. This is called the "Geek" clock. "Geek" is an American slang word given to people who were employed in fairgrounds and freak shows to perform the most ugly, disgusting and depraved acts in order to earn their keep, such as bite the heads off of live chickens. The thirteen hours on the clock face refers to the insanity of this behaviour and the questionable attitude of both the fairground owners who instigated and insisted on such acts and the strange mentality of those who paid money to see such acts. The "Geek" clock can also stand as a critical comment against the current "Geek" culture of society today, with its cult of celebrity in which the mundane, the dubious, the inane, even the criminal or the deliberately provocative are elevated to global status. It also refers to a society, which celebrates and encourages short-term thinking; a society that I feel is moving to fast without enough thought being given to what is being lost or the subsequent consequences of this headlong rush.)

23) Primum Mobile: This That There
Kurt Schwitters’ scissors and specially adapted “random radio”.
(Kurt Schwitters' scissors alongside a specially adapted “random radio”. I want to make a link between his pioneering work using the collage principle in a wide range of disciplines including abstract picture making, sound experiments, phonetic poetry, installations, graphic design, sculpture, set design, etc., to the multimedia world that we now live in and which we take for granted. This will be a gentle but heartfelt homage to a man whose life and work have been a constant source of inspiration to me and whose influence on the arts and the media, I feel, has been totally overlooked and underrated. The "random radio" that I've devised. Is an old, 1940's valve radio that has a slow moving motor (1 revolution per minute) attached to the station-tuning dial. Manual tuning of the radio signal has been made impossible, subsequently it ceaselessly searches for a static station signal, in vain. This produces an endlessly changing sound collage of the everyday, which the listener will never hear twice. A generative sound collage machine, it alludes to numerous ideas about Schwitters and his works, contemporary communications and also to the shifting nature of European history, of geography and borders, boundaries and those in between areas known as "no-man's land", languages, cultural similarities and differences, and the current question of contemporary nomads, asylum seekers.)

23) Shooting The Past
Rose and artificial rose with dewdrops.
(A pink rose is suspended (right way up) next to, a seemingly fresh pink rose similarly suspended upside down, - in fact an artificial silk rose complete with fake dew drops. Over time the real rose will die whilst the second rose will apparently defy death and stay fresh. This is partly about the fragility of life itself. It also is about the media’s peculiar ability to capture a moment in time, to freeze the instant and convey only a version of the truth. It is also about our perception, how we see and how we interpret photographs, frozen moments of truth or edited manipulated fictions.

24) Field Work
Carpenter’s smoothing plane, earth and printed texts on paper.
(This is a homage to poets and poetry, inspired by reading Seamus Heaney’s essays in “Finders Keepers” , and especially a piece called “The Government of the Tongue”. It also obliquely demonstrates the art of poetry, of digging for a subject and of shaping and crafting words that invoke a sense of wonder in a reader. The texts used in the piece are:-

…neither speaks nor remains silent, but gives signs + touch into meaning + after thought + what matters is not what’s measured + repetition is powerless before ecstasy + an approximation is all one needs of the real + signs of life are held in rock, the messages of the dead encoded in stone + words and numbers are all we have to describe the world + Roman amphitheatres during the Middle Ages were often used as barns and crops were planted in ancient arenas. Farmers were astonished by the prodigious growth – unaware that the earth had been steeped in blood + art, like poetry is imaginative truth, a means of creating unpredicted situations which could never, in actuality exist in the everyday. In a sense art consists of lies, but these are lies of value + the world will not perish for want of wonders, but for want of wonder + all loud is silence, all quiet noise, echoing absence + lichens and ice and salt crystals make more sand than ocean waves do +… this is the vowel of the earth / dreaming its root / in flowers and snow + Galileo eclipsed the heaventree + nothing is more real than nothing + … if I should remark that in the Pacific depths, bubbles trickle ominously through concrete boxes, what would you think? + the texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of the woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle + nature composes some of her loveliest poems for the microscope and the telescope + In Antarctica, in March, the sea ice begins growing at twenty-two miles a minute, the greatest seasonal event on earth + … it is a flow which has form, a form which flows … + Atomic tests in Nevada to test the effects of strontium on bones went under the codename of “operation Sunshine” with units of strontium labelled as “Sunshine Units” + the primacy of process + in the beginning was the gesture, not the word. The body moves before the tongue speaks + Blue Tear – the tear that cannot be held in, despite all efforts + poetry is what makes the invisible appear + the glare that explodes the lamp + ice permanent as iron, air that aches + biologists have found in the top inch of forest soil an average of 1,356 living creatures in each square foot, including 865 mites, 265 springtails, 22 millipedes, 19 adult beetles and various numbers of other forms of microscopic creatures, approximately 2 billion bacteria, millions of fungi, protozoa and algae; all in a mere teaspoonful of soil + time was a hook in his mouth + I’ll believe in religion when I hear an animal say the word God + Chinese House + knit with fog and juggle with soot + distance is internal + the mirror’s ghost, the world’s instant + in the reign of thoughts, imprudence is a method + the less we know, the more we name + if you stay still, earth buries you + …18 benedictions; that number, meaning “life” in Hebrew, corresponds to 18 vertebrae we bend when we pray + the Danube is guarded by a swarm of bees + Fire King + an optic lens was found in the rubble of Babylon + William II of England felt a cold wind pass through his side; the next day Tyrell’s arrow killed him + time was a hook in his mouth, reeling him in jaw-first + light bending + Q. Why is there something rather than nothing? A. Because nothing is unstable + the skin of an adult human covers a surface of 2,750 square inches; this is the largest organ of the body + the three Cs essential for a nation’s evolution:- curiosity, capitalism and conscience +

25) Divining Silence
Medal presentation box, ash and loudspeaker.
(This is a small, contemplative piece that suggests an idea of listening in to hidden internal secret sounds, our own emotional responses and the sounds of natural processes within the natural world. Ashes refer to the transitoriness of life; the perishable human body; mortality. In some rituals they have a purifying power.)

26) Revolution
Motor, stone, copper wire and ceramic bowl.
(A small ceramic bowl containing a stone rounded by the currents in a river, which is attached to a copper wire suspended from and attached to a small motor turning at 1 revolution per minute. The stone sculpts the bowl whilst at the same time the bowl shapes the stone. Here the stone symbolises nature, what is given, and the certainty of mathematics and natural laws. The bowl represents what we make of that nature i.e. culture. The two objects working reciprocally together allude to the (uneasy) symbiosis we have with nature, which produces culture and cultural evolution. This piece has been inspired by my readings of William Wordsworth and serves to illustrate the imperative that runs through all of his work, which is that art should disclose in the workings of the universe analogues for the human mind and soul.)

27) Without End (Towards the Crystal and the Flame)
Book, salt, gold leaf on board, acrylics, glass.
(A book titled “A History of the Earth and Animated Nature; Volume I” by Oliver Goldsmith, published in 1832, sealed in salt, on a bed of gold leaf with a sheet of glass holding it down. This particular book when published garnered great praise for its illuminating insight into our world. In fact it is a typical work of an imperialist, colonialist Victorian gentleman-cum-amateur scientist, full of spurious anecdotal evidence, ill-informed facts and dubious claims and is peppered with racist hyperbole. Salt destroys all but gold and glass. Salt, like time itself, is a preservative and a destroyer; it is the incorruptible essence of life; at death it is the last residue. This also refers to Italo Calvino's writings and in particular a book called "Six Memos for the Next Millennium" which contains a short essay called "Exactitude" in which he discusses beautifully, the similarities and differences between a crystal and a flame. This is a really inspiring, erudite book that is alive with stimulating suggestivity. In this instance salt is destroying the book and by doing so is metaphorically redressing the natural order of things.)

Dark Embryos series
4 small boxed frames, each containing a different compressed material: -
(Coal = carbon = the oldest known substance in the universe. Volcano dust = evidence of enormous unseen eruptions beneath the earth’s crust. Salt = destroys all but gold and glass, like time itself it is, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, the great destroyer and the great preserver. Deer fur = soft and elusive. Where I live I frequently see a herd of 8 wild deer. These are beautiful, gentle, shy and understandably nervous creatures. Watching them calms me and inspires me greatly and I always long to stroke them but they will not allow human beings to approach them. I want these four boxes to convey ideas about materials and emotions that are both enduring and ethereal, the everyday that we tend to ignore, take for granted or abuse. These are materials that are usually hidden, unseen or untouchable and yet they effect us everyday - they serve to illustrate both the primacy of process frozen in time and the potential power and energy of compression whether it be of materials or ideas or words. For example, good poets have this ability to convey ideas of jaw-dropping insight and beauty in a few lines of crafted compression.)

28) Dark Embryo #1: Coal

29) Dark Embryo #2: Volcano dust

30) Dark Embryo #3: Deer fur

31) Dark Embryo #4: Salt

Assemblage boxes
(These relate to and celebrate the small, unseen, quiet explosions of energy in natural phenomenon, what I call "little forevers" - as opposed to the "big nows" of most of the contemporary media landscape. These are meditative, contemplative and curatorial works.)

32) What If? (Hum Box)
Loudspeaker, plaster, acrylics and oils in wooden box.

33) Perfume
Lightbulb, copper, roots, plaster, acrylics and oils in wooden box.

34) Fall to Rise
Leaves, mica, plaster, acrylics and oils in wooden box.

35) Little Niagaras
Feather, mica, plaster, acrylics and oils in wooden box.

- Some small mixed media leporello (concertina folding) hand made books concerned with the ethereal and the enduring. One Atoms To Skin demonstrates the process of rusting - man-made materials being gently subsumed and transformed by a natural chemical process, and another Dreaming Its Root shows abstracted cloud drawings using a Victorian art which uses candle smoke. Both are ethereal forms and both express the fragility and unpredictability of our contemporary condition. One never sees the same cloud twice and yet the smoke drawings are fixed. A third In Time explores celestial skies; another reference to Galileo.