MANDI VIII – KRIS MARTIN//AS PART OF ‘PLASTERS: CASTS AND COPIES’, HEPWORTH GALLERY, WAKEFIELD//JULY 2015.
I am very much attracted to the perfection of the replica –
a broken or useless object replicated becomes a sublime object – it stands as
an authentic presence distant from its historical tradition.
Like the recent Paleolithic Chauvet cave which has been recreated exact - so we can travel through hyperreality - to study and understand the real through a simulation. A cathedral of the replica - to be overwhelmed by - rolling our eyes over the details, knowingly acknowledging the artificial - the model is catatonic -
Like the recent Paleolithic Chauvet cave which has been recreated exact - so we can travel through hyperreality - to study and understand the real through a simulation. A cathedral of the replica - to be overwhelmed by - rolling our eyes over the details, knowingly acknowledging the artificial - the model is catatonic -
There is a satisfaction when an object is replicated; its
identical version is to be read in a completely different way. Kris Martin has
given us a plaster duplication of the Hellenic sculpture ‘Laocoön and His Sons’,
which Martin has expressed through dematerialisation. It is oblique in its
imitation – taken from a practice and understanding into abstraction.
There is a fundamental problem with Counterfeit[i]
in that it will never hold that which the real
holds – we can only read the simulacra as ‘material’ production, as it can only
resemble the values of its authentic counterpart – it becomes free from its
original meaning and symbolic order. And so its interest lies not in the
narrative of the physical work that it resembles but its own simulated order –
one which has been created through the act of mimicry. What we are left with is
a work that is read topographically – from the fragile plaster, its weight, the
balance and the spaces which occur between.
SURFERS PARADISE - AUSTRALIA//
Fifty stories up the Chevron Tower sits an open roofed man-made beach – an assortment of fiberglass rocks surrounding a pool, polyester resin Darwin palm tree forest and thatched seaside bar complete with a broken surfboard triptych. You can sit upon the ‘Little Willie’ post-card deck chairs; put your feet in the pool and absent yourself from not just the augmentation of chaos that descends on the ACTUAL beach but absent yourself completely from nature. The terrarium levitated above the scape below casting a shadow over the sands of the five mile coast. I was lucky enough to see the timed pumps and pressure tubes which create the waterfall into the pool – upon the fiberglass-reinforced polyester mound of rocks. Circulating nervous system of the resort – connecting to the scenery to provide a vessel – spokes of a bike rotating fluid towards the plantations – the pools temperature maintained and doused in sodium hydrochlorite swirled by the projectile upturn of water fountains and Jacuzzi gas bubbles.
Excremental
“A programme that will take the time to actually go deeper, to tell you not just what’s happening…but why” –
Six p.m. with George Negus.
“…to tell you not just what’s happening…but why”
Every station available to Australia reverts back to this
programme,
“…what’s happening….but why”,
Assertive and passive,
“…happening…but why”,
As I look into the wobbling neck of Negus, his jaunty
Australian expression reduced from his eyes leaving sad piss-holes, from his
mouth which is a rectangle smile and fallen to the jowls leaving a sagging mask
disappointed in itself as it realises that it cannot tell you “why”.
SURFERS PARADISE - AUSTRALIA//
Fifty stories up the Chevron Tower sits an open roofed man-made beach – an assortment of fiberglass rocks surrounding a pool, polyester resin Darwin palm tree forest and thatched seaside bar complete with a broken surfboard triptych. You can sit upon the ‘Little Willie’ post-card deck chairs; put your feet in the pool and absent yourself from not just the augmentation of chaos that descends on the ACTUAL beach but absent yourself completely from nature. The terrarium levitated above the scape below casting a shadow over the sands of the five mile coast. I was lucky enough to see the timed pumps and pressure tubes which create the waterfall into the pool – upon the fiberglass-reinforced polyester mound of rocks. Circulating nervous system of the resort – connecting to the scenery to provide a vessel – spokes of a bike rotating fluid towards the plantations – the pools temperature maintained and doused in sodium hydrochlorite swirled by the projectile upturn of water fountains and Jacuzzi gas bubbles.
Tropical
Fruit World -
The Gold Coast is the centre of the unbearable glare – the
holiday resort which is layered in soft-mall music, giant Polynesian sculptures
replicated out of breezeblock, nightclubs and seven-elevens.
In fact, the districts remain in light throughout – there is
never a moment where there is not a strange illuminous glow emitted from this
place – spotlights and arabesques all pointing into the centre of Cavill Ave.
Excremental
We drove to Boulia – a small village which follows through
to the lunar-scape that is the Simpson Desert where the giant ornamental
village will be constructed. We arrive at night after driving through a huge
storm (a drive which, in 2011 coincided with a chaotic flood which devastated
most of Brisbane) – to see the site which is illuminated with huge floodlights.
We sit about three miles or so away from the location on the newly turfed
asphalt road – the occasional chirp of outback wildlife surrounds us – the air
has a certain electricity, breathing feels like a static-shock to the lungs. On
one side of us is Mounte la Touche and opposite Drinans Gorge Bore – in front
is a Kaleidoscopic maze of scaffolding and chrome pipes. The scale is
mesmerising as the attraction is set to be gigantic – yet from the distance we
are at, you could almost make it ornamental – like a model sat upon a birdbath
central to the garden. Like the man-made beach upon the tower – the attraction
rests on its own plateau, other-worldly and alien to the harsh and distant
milieu. The roaring sand across the road is brittle – there is a persistent
heat which travels through the atmosphere – the desert was like an opening out
of consciousness – like a cosmic-split which occurs when leaving the electric
lights of the inner-city or even the off road petrol station – there is this
huge tear in the mind and space which merge together to form an interactive
multi-dimensionality.
A sign reads;
B.B
IMAGINEER/HOFFMANNS –
Followed with a three-dimensional diagram of the giant
reconstruction of Surfers Paradise within the desert, its scale emphasized by
the ACTUAL Surfers Paradise next to it.
As we sit drinking, we hear thunderous roars echo from
behind us – as if the storms of the north have crept up and about to consume us
whole. But the sky was clear and appeared to extend three-hundred and sixty-one
degrees – passing its own vertex. No wagons would let out something as beastly
as this – it was almost as if the desert was about to separate between the
mountain of rubble to the right and the chasm to the left. Until a huge blast
of sand jets up all around us – creating a tornado of dust and growls, at first
I thought I was about to spiral into the ground and fall into an abyss – until
I could see the chrome of motorbike exhausts, and hear the sneering laughter of
petrol-heads teasing us. We were lampooned, humiliated from all angles and they
didn’t let up – they circulated us for about five minutes until they drove off
into the distance – flicking cigarette butts which dissipate into the darkness
like fireflies. Leaving us both disillusioned on the floor surrounded by a
pentangle of tyre-marks and glittering sands settling upon us – our faces
filthy with oil and dirt, our beers thickened with earth.
Fitzpatrick industrial estate in New South Wales held a
small installation to conceptualise the attraction project – supported by
Hoffman Engineering, B.B Imagineer have been meeting with the
Australian-Japanese Foundation who are giving additional funding and in the
process of this meeting, the team organised to create a replication of the
village within one of the empty warehouses.
As we entered – the room was desolate and cold – it was your
Laymen’s corrugated metal, rusted scaffolding and concrete floor unit B – fixed
to the walls were elongated pieces of green felt – hanging from the ceiling,
rafters and wire were hundreds of different coloured balls. All floating at
different heights, within five minutes of gathering – a group were allocated in
sets of ten and asked to proceed into the middle of the room where we were
taken through fire safety.
It was made apparent to us, that when looking up – the
ceiling was a curved mirror – almost like the stained glass skylight of Música
Catalana – but one large sheet of Perspex which reflected the group all gazing
upwards.
The lights went out – and rain started to patter against the
metal exterior. It rained every day that I was in New South Wales. I spent
weeks having wet feet and staying indoors surrounded by insects and a constant
smell of sewage that had bled up from the gutters. All of a sudden, the
flickering of lights trying to catch the Argon – then projected was a hologram
of Surfers Paradise – only its scale gigantic.
Motion sickness ran through our group like a plague had hit,
there was a projection of the Simpson Desert which created a vortex around the
building. This struck me firstly as the most important feature of the hologram
as it was more real than the park itself – because it could be experienced
without nature – without the dry air baking our eyes, or the chafing raw skin
between the legs, or the illicit feeling that you cannot breathe because every
inhale drains the energy straight from you. Instead – you could experience the
idea of this explicit emotion with the sound, smell and dampness that the rain
had caused. It could be embraced without the restrictions of the climate. More
interestingly so – the projection was a fade from the rich blue skies of the
desert into the orange mud-sand - it lacked horizon and distance, something
which becomes more real than the area of the desert itself – the infinite
expanding projection of the desert.
Then all of a sudden, it all made sense – the curvature in
the ceiling was put in place to allow the three-dimensional transparent plates which
hang ghostly and flickering, to extend beyond the boundaries of the prism
within which it is constrained. This extension also happened laterally – a
reason for the vortex of the background projection – as it seemingly increased
by definition that it was an illusion. They called them invisible walls – something commonplace in computer games where a
restricted area (which usually is a zone where scenery can hide the edges of
the map) cannot be accessed as if a plane of glass was placed ahead. These
invisible walls were the green felt which hanged against the corrugated metal –
and like a two way mirror, if you close your hands and eyes towards the wall,
you can see a very dull green from the intense lasers.
We wander through the crystal projection of Peninsular Drive
and a strange saturation of reflections to instate the Nerang River – strange,
faceless humanoids march in a light, passive tone in a giant simulation past
the station – through the quietness of a giant arena – the internet café to the
left leading up to the carnival of the central party life. At this point – they
were constructing a Ferris wheel which is a factual semi-circle dissected into
a pentagram overlooking the Chevron, Hilton and out towards the Coral Sea.
I was forced into disbelief by the silence of the
replication – the pattering of average sized rain compared to the giant scale
of the hologram made it far more alien to me – as we wander past the Beer
Garden bar or Fiddlers Green – there is no smell of stale beer, no screaming or
kitsch jig emitting from the light smoke or short skirt.
Willard Wigan
“A programme that will take the time to actually go deeper, to tell you not just what’s happening…but why” –
“Take the time to actually go deeper…”
I slip on magnified glasses which wrap around – my halogen
lamp with the kinetic arm pulled down and animated over the face of Negus –
after I remove his glasses, the intense light shuts his eyes and relaxes the
bottom of the face where I will begin my work.
In a mass acne of detail, the sebum leaks from the porous
mask of his aged skin which I begin to massage gently with a dry cloth to
relieve the contortions of grease and oils. When I focus on the face, there are
strange shifts that occur, from ear lobe to nose – identity becomes
translucent, a great shock of matter is revealed. Bristles from the moustache
dance under the quivering wind departed from the nostril which is warm against
the back of my hand – still massaging the flesh.
“A programme that will take the time…”,
Hairs are plucked from the edge of his nose, blemishes
amended – scalp hair shaved clean bald. I then examine the proportion of the
face :- mapping out the geography from the scalp to eyebrows, the distance
between the eyes and the nose – the peak has a very distinct altitude which
plateaus above the rest of the face landscape. The nose will represent the
mountain to which overlooks the valley of the mouth and chin – the horizon of
the shirt collar and chest into the atmosphere of the barren void that exists
outwards.
The scalp is a soft desert, heated by the coarse halogen
lamp which dries the flesh to scales and dried psoriasis craters – there is
little moisture and its distance is greater than the rest of the landscape.
Houses of suburbia mapped across the Philtrum accessed
through a large viaduct leading from the desert to eyebrows and finally the
industrial mouth and chin – circulating the crescent of the eyelid and inner
city left cheek.
Maxilla
Way.
Sphenoid
Quarter.
The
Metopic Desert.
Zygoma
Junction.
Nasal
Lane.
The city lights extend across the cheeks – left cheek is
capital, resembling the metropolitan Canberra – its centre a globular extension
of governmental, municipal and cultural vitality, the circular district
surrounded by a pentagram of museums and galleries eventually spanning out
towards the busy quagmire of crowds; the right cheek being its historical
counterpart for trading and industrial, working-class empowerment. You can see
from the blueprint a divide of ethics where left-cheek-centric Negus holds his
tongue and right a far more exciting area with its own internal stomach of
underground music and art – its people rule the right-cheek, politics rule the
left.
One connection between the suburban nose and the reflective
cities – is the sewage outlet which runs beneath the dermis and out of the
Premaxilla, dripping waste into the open mouth.
“We will be discussing homo-sex-uality in animals.”
The table that Negus lay on has a damp coating of mustard
oil, yellow droplets upon the bottles of Clobetasone Butyrate – the instruments
of hairline brushes, needles, microscopic lenses, coatings and polyester cement
glistens with the moisture of ointments which preserve and isolate any
exfoliation or overactive sebaceous glands. It seems that Negus has automatic
responses to the nip of the needle – shouting out quotes broken apart from
previous lines in his six p.m. slot.
As the micro-landscape grew, Negus dissolved – his identity
expanding as a textured surface. Keratin waterfalls, psoriasis caves and
follicle campsites. Scaffolding was placed to hold up the eyelids whilst
intraocular fluid is dyed to match the crystal lakes. Small clay islands
floated in the retinal vein occlusion causing a sharp aggravated haemorrhage.
Microfibre lights illuminating the strips of freeway, dotted up high-rise
buildings across the metropolitan areas – darkness swallows the rural outback;
and as my work continues and expands onto the pillow which his head lay on – I
construct him into the actual – his body morphed into fragmental ornament.
Cosmology
of Architecture.
The concrete under the baking Australian sun was bone-dry,
it was a surreal landscape. In the distance you could see an ocean of red
sands, cutting the horizon and feeling indefinitely – The concrete island
caused a mirage which stretched across like a sprite which outstretches the
perimeters of an AutoCAD map. Always within vision and endlessly growing, a
glitch in the landscape and a perspective that cannot fit the dimensions. The
site during the day had far more movement, it was populated – not just
internally but also externally – tourists travelled into the area just to
capture its formation.
It was a huge wildlife area of vermillion sands and dry,
constant heat. A sky so rich and blue that – and mainly due to the large
skeletons of scaffolding – seemed a much further distance from land. No cloud
ever dared cross this area – even tourists would wait until the winter to
venture out into the sands. The area of work was flat, and like much of
Australia, it was deprived of its natural shapes and contortions, even though
the desert is home to some of the largest sand dunes in the world, it was no
exception to planning permissions or allow any kind of restraint to the
project. Variations of nature had its claws deeply embedded surrounding the
landfill, but man had controlled a vast circumference of the desert that any
slight deviation to it would be found and then executed.
Dust and hot red sand blew over the ground; it made a
delicate noise across the large slab of concrete. The whole area was alien to
everyone who saw it, surrounded by a giant metal fence – but regardless of
this, the attraction was a see-through structure and could be seen from miles
away. In the mid-August heat, the sun was going down at three and the whole
area was a dark pink.
Forty-two thousand acres, ten square miles – this island
holds far over one-hundred thousand metric tonnes of concrete.
Like the hologram structure in New South Wales – you could
wander past the work men whose time spent on the site meant that the hot red
sand had mixed with the sweat on their faces creating a sandpaper effect when
they use their bandanas to wipe away the corrosive mix – tearing away at their
flesh and leaving their eyes exhausted and red beneath their filthy goggles.
They let you be as though they were the humanoid animations which float past
you in a walking gesture – no faces, no language – just practical and routine
movement.
They had dug wells – prepared sewage pipes, constructed
large scaffold anatomies, placed roads, illuminated the area with floodlights;
metal buildings, land plots, metal fences, a rollercoaster, lobular temple,
electrical connection. Columns appeared from the ground cracking the Earth in
the order of some pig-nipple-god leading to a super-mall which was a basic
foundation of blue plastic barrels, wagons, filth and large metal rope
sprouting out of huge concrete slabs. Broken glass shards mixed in with dirt
and spit dried to form clay – cigarette butts stuck into a sandwich which had
been tampered with – some workers placed metal shards in the ham, burned holes
in the bread, spat on the lettuce and placed it back in the piss-soaked
container labelled BURKE. It had been buried with a dead blackbird taped to it
– each negative surface area now filled with wet sand – a sharks tooth painted
blue in some Mesoamerican replica – buried beneath the main fountain of the
attraction. Like an omen for the country – that this will one day rule – men
and women will torch their towns, raid ships, destroy buildings, rape
architecture and have bacchanalian cocaine parties within the museums in hope
that their towns and cities too will be created into giant ornaments. That they
will carry artifices of their cities and bury them around this landsite – lay
candles around their motorbike altar piece and pray to the vulgarity of
Gargantua. Dragging the rusted boats, cars, pink limousines, a Ferris wheel,
decomposed polyutherene constructions from MOVIE WORLD – the mechanical cogs
and chain-lift from the SCOOBY DOO SPOOKY COASTER. Jars of urine collected from
the toilets of mock Irish pubs, kangaroo teddies with I [HEART symbol] AUSTRALIA
(replacing objects with language); that dirty comb in the gutter, the metal
button received from the gentleman who lived on the boat, scratch cards –
operatic voices syphoned into a huge barrel creating a hysterical avalanche of
sound contained. All buried beneath the giant-megalopoli.
Kilcoy
Murgon Road –
Around this time of the transmigration, rubber sharks had
been placed remotely around go-to resorts to make holiday makers aware of the
dangers of the open ocean. Coincidently, more people became interested in the
submerging attack of foam-fish and began to venture towards them – eventually
being consumed by actual sharks attracted to the shape of the dummies. The
shores ran red with torn filament of muscle, cracked-bone, nylon and elastic;
walls of sandcastles washed in the brown rust of human blood.
It was along this road where we watched the colourful parade
of wagons bring in gigantic scenery –
Huge monoliths of building edges.
Peru brown meters of architecture with giant neon CHEVRON
RENAISSENCE.
True date palm trees in the dozens, all stacked like giant
logs.
Segments of the towers all separated into huge abstract
sections.
Rolls of turf and pattern tiles; wall mounts and roof tops.
Comedic sculptures from the DRACULA’S haunted house – large
mouths, spider legs and theatrical scenery.
Tree branches, glass panes, sand texture, scaffolding,
cranes, atlas, car wheels, boarder, pink meters, vendors, automatic doors,
plant pots, pieces of sushi, park bench, Q-deck – all passing by through the
small outer village – black smoke exhaust fumes turning the reservoir golden
and sticky. European architects became apparent, although the attraction was
not yet open to the public, you could still access a good amount which was
surrounded by an eight meter tall corrugated steel fence, they would congregate
and network with one and other – belittling the camera heavy tourists who
photographed monuments, props and resources imported via heavy-machinery.
Mounds of litter started entering the worksite, clogging up newly painted
scenery with crisp packets and beer cans, obscuring the pristine nature and metropolis
that was but mazes of infer-structure.
BLACKPOOL MINIATURE VILLAGE//
When does a miniature village stop – why is it that someone
can add a finishing touch without the consideration of a continuum, I am not
satisfied that the model ends just at the roof, all things considered the
artist has now opened a space where the details must continue. Though the
village is imaginary – some sort of schizophrenic flaneur – there needs to
include a miniature realm, miniature blueprints – small cavernous details – inner stories,
miniature-miniature villages – miniature tools that are operated through the
use of larger but still miniature tools – systematically generating a whole
miniature operation controlled by the artist – models building on top of one and
other – growing immediately like an unstoppable root – direct veins from the
artist, to the miniature world and into the Earth – something that once you
destroy carries on growing automatically – replicating itself vertically –thousands
of meters high.
And as Durtal argues in The Cathedral (J.K.Huysmans);
"It is almost certain that it was in the forest that man found the prototype of the nave and the pointed arch. The most amazing cathedral constructed by Nature herself, with lavish outlay of the pointed aisle of branches, is at Jumiéges. There, close to the splendid ruins o the Abbey, where the two towers are still intact, while the roofless nave, carpeted with flowers, ends in a chancel of foliage shut in by an apse of trees, three vast aisles of centenary boles extended in parallel lines; one in the middle, very wide, the two others, one on each side, somewhat narrower; they exactly represent a church nave with its two side aisles, upheld by black columns and roofed with verdure..."
The discussion follows on through the Cathedral where Durtal believes that the overwhelming scale of the church - its cosmology of symbolism - the very structures of the Gothic all comes from nature.
And thus - the miniature village can be seen as an opposition to the architecture of the Cathedral (especially the medieval Gothic) in that where the magnificent height of the building is a reminder of how small we are - that separation of space and how it becomes sectioned - proves that the miniature village embodies us with a sense of the superhuman. The symbolism of the Cathedral - its creatures and saints versus the reduction of the miniature village - taking the quaint and banality of the everyday and composing it with an inverse scale of what the Cathedral may hold. Taking its source directly from the intersubjective state of contemporary life - the replication of the REAL - rather than from nature.
"It is almost certain that it was in the forest that man found the prototype of the nave and the pointed arch. The most amazing cathedral constructed by Nature herself, with lavish outlay of the pointed aisle of branches, is at Jumiéges. There, close to the splendid ruins o the Abbey, where the two towers are still intact, while the roofless nave, carpeted with flowers, ends in a chancel of foliage shut in by an apse of trees, three vast aisles of centenary boles extended in parallel lines; one in the middle, very wide, the two others, one on each side, somewhat narrower; they exactly represent a church nave with its two side aisles, upheld by black columns and roofed with verdure..."
The discussion follows on through the Cathedral where Durtal believes that the overwhelming scale of the church - its cosmology of symbolism - the very structures of the Gothic all comes from nature.
And thus - the miniature village can be seen as an opposition to the architecture of the Cathedral (especially the medieval Gothic) in that where the magnificent height of the building is a reminder of how small we are - that separation of space and how it becomes sectioned - proves that the miniature village embodies us with a sense of the superhuman. The symbolism of the Cathedral - its creatures and saints versus the reduction of the miniature village - taking the quaint and banality of the everyday and composing it with an inverse scale of what the Cathedral may hold. Taking its source directly from the intersubjective state of contemporary life - the replication of the REAL - rather than from nature.
[i]
Baudrillard arranges the order of simulation into three appearances, parallel to the mutations of the law of
value, have followed one another since the Renaissance… and goes on to
describe the Counterfeit as …the dominant scheme of the “classical”
period, from the Renaissance to the industrial revolution…. The first order of
simulacrum is based on the natural law of value, that of the second order
(Production) on the commercial law of value, that of the third order (Simulation)
on the structural law of value.