Unstable Surfaces // Material Matters // Becoming and Going // 来来去去(lái lái qù qù)

Surface Tensions // Black Noise // Process through Sculpture

Following my interest in Object Oriented Ontology, I’ve been reading more about the philosopher Garman Harman’s concept of ‘black noise’ in connection to ‘sensual objects’. According to Harman, we can never access the full reality of objects, and so we cannot define an object merely by the qualities it possesses. We are therefore presented with an object’s sensual properties, which Harman describes as ‘black noise’ - layers which ‘encrust’ a sensual object, and relate to the object’s essential qualities, its accidental qualities and its relationships with peripheral objects. Can this notion be of significance to the visual artist, without merely becoming illustrative, and can this questioning expand our holistic understanding of materials? In about a week’s time I’ll be taking part in the New York Studio School’s Sculpture Marathon with Jilaine Jones, where I intend to explore these ideas with new and found materials in the studio.

Pigment, boiled linseed oil, oil paint, spray mount on canvas … the drying skins of the oil pull and push pigment around on the surface of the canvas. After nearly 4 months, the paintings are still not fully dry.

Exhibition: Becoming and Going // 来来去去 (lái lái qù qù)

Things went full circle in January, when students that I was teaching during my time in China made it to my exhibition, Becoming and Going // 来来去去 (lái lái qù qù) at the Leith School of Art. It was the first time I’ve exhibited the same work in two entirely different locations, in two entirely different countries, and was a valuable opportunity to see how the work shifted and changed in context and meaning in this new but familiar environment. 

Installation shots from DAC, Chongqing, 2019

The World and Chongqing, Newspaper article, 2019

The paintings, scrolls and threaded pieces on display were part of a thread, a rip, a seed (一个线程，一个裂口，一个种子) that took place at the Dimensions Art Centre in Chongqing city centre in April 2019. With New Materialist perspectives, Buddhist Philosophy and Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) as theoretical frameworks to my research, I was interested in how certain elements or ideas of an artwork always withdraw, or withhold themselves, from us.   

            

'Resting at Leiyin Temple', 'Remembered Paths at Fuhu Temple' and 'Journey to Chunyang Palace' 

were embroidered paintings that I started in China and finished upon my return to Edinburgh.