edel assanti

"Behold yon miserable creature.  That Point is a Being like ourselves,

but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf.  He is himself his own World,

his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception;

he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no

experience of them; he has no cognizance even of the number Two; nor

has he a thought of Plurality; for he is himself his One and All, being

really Nothing.  Yet mark his perfect self-contentment, and hence learn

this lesson, that to be self-contented is to be vile and ignorant, and

that to aspire is better than to be blindly and impotently happy.  Now

listen."

drawing machines

-- rebecca horn --

continuous transformation
investigations into the human body
conceptual/ performative
questions boundaries of space and time
freedom of line







This piece shown above is called The ink sprayer and is from the Bodylandscapes series, as the series title suggests, this may refer to the body and perhaps IV drip bags, but it also seems to have its own integrity and power.

cheap date

the stuff of nightmares

As you walk past this installation you are suddenly hit by a child like sense of sensitivity and fear of greater things (e.g. wildlife) which you could say has been very much truthfully retold by the fact that the exhibit was made by local schoolchildren. The space is transformed into a sinister atmosphere most progressively by the sounds that are played out adding a haunting sense of nature’s presence. For example a baby is shown hanging from the clasps of a black bird showing a sense of innocence that is being somehow lost or taken away.  However it is not all sinister here, there is a sense of a fairy tale whereby good and bad are ever present. This is displayed in the sense of innocence that is displayed as the stories have been told and retold to successive generations. There a sense of common themes being developed here in how good triumphs evil, heroes behave selflessly and a sense of everyone living happily ever after.

A row of bears of all shapes and sizes are displayed to the opposite of the installation displaying a sense of nostalgia and innocence that is also strangely present in the installation piece opposite (which has been made not only by young school children but also by artists who led the sessions, this is displayed in the overall orchestration of the objects which is in no way childlike).

The various bears displayed all hold a sense of individual character thus giving them a sense of child like presence as they are treated as subjects of individual comfort and importance.

The orchestration of the trees and the sounds incorporated give a sense of the sinister unknown terrors which plague many a child’s nightmares, hence the title ‘the stuff of nightmares’, this exhibit forces us to confront our childhood insecurities and pushes those common fears to the forefront of our minds, putting it into reality and real terms.