Innovators 2

30 May - 29 June 2008

Michele ELLIOT
Surfacing
2008

Creation is all about mediators. Without them, nothing happens.
Gilles Deleuze, 'Mediators' in Incorporations, 1992

Surfacing is a part of an ongoing series that considers boundaries, thresholds, permanence and perception across a number of thoughts - firstly in relation to the body through material and metaphor; secondly as constructed places, as both inhabited and liminal space; and also as sites of contention and vulnerability. Boundaries can be ambiguous, elusive and slippery; volatile, unstable places that reveal a fragility, an existence on the edge of things. These shifting spaces, where one thing becomes another, mark a space of the in-between.

Surfacing comprises thousands of hand-made wooden pins and hundreds of metres of cotton thread. Pins are mediators, joining solutions used to bring two surfaces together, fixers, functional objects that perform makeshift connections, a temporary means to an end. They pierce and hold, operating as transitional objects in states of becoming and incompletion. Thread is another joining material, used in the construction of clothing and garments, another surface. Here it is tethered and drawn across the gallery over several days. In both 'hemispheres: red plane blind' and 'spill', the joiners become the surface.

Surfacing is also about the 'work' of art. It moves slowly towards a resolution, a gradual accumulation made visible to its audience through the process of making and gathering of gesture and material. It offers an opportunity to engage with the twofold process of making and installation, and also invites viewers to return to the work. In its final days, the installation will undergo one last transformation before its demise.

Thank you to Daniel Argyle, Jo Darbyshire, Dominic Lefebvre, Jo Linsdell, Louise Monte, Melanie Wolfe

 

 

Installation Photos: