Materials: human hair, milk, cotton cloth, satin lining.
Dimensions: variable
Date: 2003
This work takes its title from a text by the French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, Au fond des Images and the inscription he wrote on its inside cover.
This work is a reminiscence upon the time spent in a small studio with my daughters overlooking the Seine in Paris. It is comprised of the remnants of memories, emotions, sensations, materials, and the often unnoticed traces of daily routines, actions and habits that shaped this time. As such it bears more the sadness of a souvenir than the beauty of work of art.
These fragments, – the long dark hair collected from the hair brushes and sink each day, the frayed white satin lining of a summer dress, the tangled fibres and threads of a soft piece of cotton cloth, the puddle of milk – have been gathered, knotted and tied together, laid and poured out as a remapping of this site. The lengths of entwined hair become a rosary of threaded moments, recollected and recited each time anew. In sequence and repetition the knots trace the passages of time shared. Now the remainder of these days, their residue of textures and gestures synthesise and accrue as images – images somatically imprinted. This is then “for one who lives all the time there” the ground behind the image.
Exhibited in For Nothing, curated by Domenico De Clario,
26 November 2004 – 14 January 2005, The Bank, Midland, Western Australia.
