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A
1 metre cube space, framed.
Inside, objects are suspended by fine threads attached to the white boundary
line:
A jacket - 'hound's tooth', empty but enclosing the space required for its
owner;
An 'arrow' - made from crudely snapped twig, sprouting not one, but two
white feathers such that it could never fly, and a part rusted point bound
on with hemp;
A small book of common prayer - open at the chapter 'Forms of Prayer to
be Used at Sea'
The skeleton of a domestic fowl, or cock - on a black museum plinth, labelled.
Standing on a wire cage of grid-like nature;
The skeleton of a crow - on a similar plinth;
A dried, red rose - complete with stalk and leaves
A child's doll.
The space defined is a conceptual space, a context, enclosing all that it
contains under the same contextual label. It is a tool for expressing narrative
in the same way that language expresses meaning. It is the means by which
the objects contained are expressed; it is the linguistic utterance comprised
of the phenomena it contains. It is parentheses.
Each object is both itself and all the concept-strings associated with it.
Each is both the definite article (in its singularity of form) but also
the indefinite article (in acting as a vehicle for its ancillary meanings).
Each time an article is moved, or moved around, it changes in relation to
the items that surround it - each unique position becomes a new definition
of the article. And yet the article itself is still the same singular object.
It is to the whole as the noun is to the sentence - both the crow and crow.
What takes place inside the cube is a metamorphosis. The cube is a crucible
in which matter is transformed into concept by a simultaneous process of
identification, association and coalescence. It is an alchemy in which base
matter is rendered meaningful beyond its physical state and becomes the
divine essence. |
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