SPARE ROOM / 21 March to 17 April 2014
Fugitive Presence proposes a transient materiality, evoked by simple constructions in balance and tension, supported by sound and light. In contained space form is brought out of darkness, translucence and simple forms hinting at an evanescent present. Darkness and subdued sound seek to allow a contemplative mood.
My work in health services, the underlying uncertainty revealed by contemporary science, and inevitable changes brought by passing time have impressed on me a sense of the impermanence of being. As frameworks of knowledge and belief are continually challenged, my existence in the world is clarified through awareness and response to experience of the sensual world and investigation of attempts toward understanding.
Although being can be described as temporary or ephemeral, it is insistent. The experience of being in the world arrives to our senses, demanding to be acknowledged, assuaged, evaluated, denied, accepted, even understood in its temporality.
The static visual art-work can be said to hold a moment of time, allowing a deepening experience of the object and self in relationship, referring to a historical and momentary past, and gesturing toward a possible future. Sound also offers an ephemeral expression. Embedded in the physicality of complex sound waves, the experience of sound is a moment by moment arrival of information. Sound contains both a continuum of time and the momentary.
In my work for MFA in 2013 I presented of sculptures of simple form, some with sound and light embedded, that aimed to convey a sense of unease. There was an aesthetic intention of care for form and finish. While not overly polished, they responded to a coherence of tone and style. Colour was reduced to black with shades of grey.
In Fugitive Presence I intend to investigate what is conveyed by leaving materials in a raw, shop-bought state, apart from the needs of fitting and fixing. I aim for a temporary nature to the work, of construction in movement toward another arrangement.
Tension and balance are conveyed in the arrangement of pieces. Form is materialised through the response of transparent and translucent material to the fall of light. A minimum use of colour aims to draw attention to the material and to the intention of the work to be an art piece, presented with a sense of the poetics of space.
A continuum of sound, recorded and transformed from the everyday sonic presence of machinery and the human in the local area, aims to thread distinct sections of the visual together in a contemplative moment.
Bruce Dickson 2014