10 Jan Can you hear me??
Folds have always been a source of pleasure for me. Folds of flesh, fabric, undulating landscapes, enveloping, uni-directional pliable interchanges. In the late 1990’s I saw a wonderful collection of paintings by Alison Watt in Edinburgh. Her juxtaposition of nude painting and fabric folds creates a pleasing dialogue.
‘The thing is inseparable from a person perceiving it, and can never actually be in itself, because it stands at the other end of our gaze, or at the terminus of a sensory exploration which invests it with humanity. To this extent, every perception is a communication or a communion…. a coition, so to speak of our body with things.” (Merleau-Ponty) Pg.14 Watt
The Labyrinth spoke of body. Bob spoke to me of the Labyrinth in the ear, the Osseous Labyrinth. So I included it in my research. I thought about it as a sound chamber, a place to listen. Where echoes live.
Using clay I made a rough model of an ear-like cochlea. A place for the little people. Painted with flesh like tones. Can you hear me? “Bodies in a place of existence, there is no existence without place, without there, without a ‘here’, a ‘here it is’ for the this. The body-space is neither full, nor empty, there is no outside nor inside” (Jean-Luc Nancy in Mirzoeff) Pg12 Watt.
