28 April - 22 May 2010
iArt Gallery, 71 Loop Street
1.
Hippocampus is the scientific name
for a seahorse.
A seahorse is a Hippocampus,
is an image.
A Hippocampus is a brain structure,
involved in cognitive mapping of space.
A map of space is a Hippocampus,
is a concept.
A Hippocampus is a seahorse.
A seahorse is a mapping of space.
2.
“Shortly into my Masters degree, a man-sized seahorse appeared in my bed. He would lie to my left, wrap his tail around me, urging me with persuasive little wriggles to roll around with him. His visits were relentless; night after night the convuluted dynamics would play themselves out. I decided to make this man-sized seahorse, hoping that he would then get out of my bed. From the precarious image of a seahorse developed a body of work.”
3.
The measuring of the wire and the little black marks
indication where to
cut cut cut.
The cutting of the wire and the
up down up down up down
of the bolt cutters.
The falling away of the off cuts
again and again and again.
The sifting and sorting.
The labeling of this piece or that,
slightly smaller than this or that,
or bigger than this,
in relation to that.
The welding and the
zap zap zap.
The up down.
On off.
Up down, on off.
Sit down, stand up.
Sit down, stand up.
4.
Hippocampus suggests some possibilities, instabilities and limitations inherent in representation and visual perception. There is a propensity in us all to see three dimensions over two; to interpret flat images as being spatial. There is also a tendency to want to recognise form and fix it to a meaning. Although existing in space, the sculptures resist a stable visual and conceptual representation and suggest ideas of other spaces, in between spaces, non-spaces, dream spaces that, at least in one’s conception and perception of it, never settles on a fixed axis of orientation. In Hippocampus, the idea explored is that of becoming rather than the being of an image (seahorse) and a concept (cognitive map of space), where process creates meaning and meaning lies within process.