February Seminar 2020
Recurring Remainder (found demolished galvanised steel tube and wire mesh fence, galvanised brackets, bolts, steel support)
“Matter is an infolding, an involution, touching itself. The past is never finished
and the future is not what will unfold. The world holds, or rather is the memories
of its iterative reconfigurings”.1
Karen Barad
This former fence initially marked the straight boundary between two houses. Buckling under the weight of progress its form, function and value shifted when both sites were cleared.
The chance encounter is central to my practice. I don’t search for these objects; they capture my attention when I am engaged in the routine and mundane tasks of everyday life. I notice these remnants, irregular and refreshing against a background of conformity, they act as a catalyst to pull me out of a subconscious state, making me stop to consider that which is easily overlooked.
Discarded, these fragments are deemed redundant, no longer useful to the capitalist system. Bringing these outcast objects back into circulation recognises a potential and freedom to question and rethink conventional notions of value.
Collected from their given context, they linger while I take time to contemplate potential sites and installation strategies. The intention is to enable the viewer to see these forms more fully through a specific gesture, a reorientation. The life and form of these materials is ongoing, so rather than permanently fixing these works I prefer to use a light touch, one which is reversable and easily dismantled enabling them to remain open to the reality of an uncertain future.
- Barad, Karen “Undoing The Future” Lecture at Roslyn Silver ’27 Science Lecture, Barnard Centre for Research on Women, New York, March 19, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMVkg5UiRog
Mel Arnold 