aperture

Ritualised Tools of Passage /  by Justin Harrison

I'm sanding some reclaimed wood for a piece and I hesitate, the colours of the grain - the history of the wood are emerging subtle yet sweet; knots, creosote, grain and dirt, its like a book with an obscure narrative that I'm trying to follow - I'm slightly torn how much to sand, I love the glassy feel of super smooth lacquered wood but it feels like a crime to remove anymore of the paternation, like I’m erasing memories. I'm trying to engage with time in a disrupted way. Keeping the history yet making new.

I accidentally put Danish oil on first - I had planned to use varnish however I know that these mistakes often work for the better so I don't worry too much. Fine saw marks appear, as forgotten half healed scars as the oil soaks into the dry fibres of the wood. Then I put too many layers on and it changes the colouration I had been obsessing over, the oil takes the wood to more warm honey colours and some of the paternation disappears.

/// I lament for a moment///

However these sculptures are meant to be fast explorative pieces, all of which is research and informative. The more I make - the more I learn about the materials and my work.

As the oil is drying I cut a second piece of wood, it's thin and brittle and doesn't have the subtlety of shape that I want, so I take to carving at it in attempt to have a little more control. This works but ads time to the process. I'm able to manipulate and manifest the forms that I feel in my head.

At some point it also occurs to me that I can char the wood that I will get a nice contrast against the Holly pegs I've been making and plan to add. This changes the voice of the piece, more gravitas than the honeyed wood. I like it and putting the two together creates more dialogue that I enjoy. (I do wonder about how I animate this work more a feature of the other recent sculptures)

On reflection of the two sculptures placed together as a piece - I almost feel as tough I've happened upon something that I shouldn't have. Like opening a tomb.

The apertures agents, the pegs agents in conflict. Some sort of holy/unholy moment. The passage at crux. The threat of the outside coming in.

I'm not sure I quiet understand what I've made, I need time to absorb what is going on. A slow burn.

 

Movement and Passage /  by Justin Harrison

Image my own

Notes whilst cycling home...I've found my processing happens at interesting moments and not always the most convenient! I've learnt to record messages to myself to scribe later.

An aperture opens up through/by the interstices, and can connect to any number of possible apertures, the rhyzomic, with no guarantee where it will end. This is the 'Unknown' the 'fluid', the 'frustration' of 'being in passage'.

To pass through requires movement, and this is fundamental, movement must always occur, because to not move is stasis, a 'little death' and that is the structure, the structure does not move, it cannot take passage through the Liminal, for it is an aberration.

The structure has an 'illusion' of movement because it has a centre (((Derrida Structure sign play)))and everything (((WHAT? All that is termed/defined by the binary of the structures definition))) is tethered to the centre, and it can only circumscribe a circle of a given diameter, territory. A false moment, an ersatz movement, a 'performative'.

Where as once displacement has occurred for an agent, then there is a' line of flight' as Deleuze describes in Minor Literatures. This displacement can come through two sources, either structural violence where somebody is ejected - removed form the structure for failing to fullfill binary demands, or violence to the structure where somebody rejects the structure and remove themselves. Rejection and Ejection - this trajectory requires 'movement' through new boundaries new borders new apertures, new interstices.

Other thoughts

The trouble with the Binary is that it is a 2 dimensional in it's approach. It lacks holistic thinking and fails to acknowledge the differance, the movement, the third dimension, or third space as Homi Bhabha describes.

AK makes work that sets up perameters that manifest the void. It messes with the binary logic, rational. Making the untenable - the untouchable

UVR makes work that stands in defiance of ejection the weigh and size, the oversized. Defiance of authority. (Often self elected authority)