What Black what?

I thought a lot about the wetness (featured object in progress 11.05.10), but I think I was scarred of mess. I don’t like mess really - I appreciate it as apart of process, but I’m a ‘neat’ person. I like things to hold together well and smoothly. Maybe that’s why the spot or circle appealed to me, that continuous smooth surface.

Thinking sculpturally though - through the object, surface wasn’t enough. I’ve made a few skins in the past, bags actually; but they were always filled with other objects, a collection of components.

B.I.T 2000

But what black? For a while there it was becoming a bit of a ‘black history’ lesson. Black: A history of a colour by Michel Pastoureau, was specifically located in the Western European story. I found the history of materials (dyes and inks) very informative, there were also other things I found intriguing...

Saint Maurice

But anyway coming back to this ‘wetness’ - got me thinking about liquidity. I’ve been reading some stuff by Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman over the last couple of years. I spent quite a bit of time with ‘Community: Seeking security in an insecure world’ while working on the Dandelion project. It was revelatory in terms of thinking more analytically about the subject generally, but also in relation to my own associations and relationships. Recently I picked up ‘Identity: conversations with Benedetto Vecchi’, Bauman uses the term ‘liquid modernity’ to explain a condition that keeps our socio political, cultural, professional and sexual identities continuously in a state of flux….