Scapelands
Burgoyne, Greig (2015) Scapelands. [Drawing, Exhibition/show, Film, Performance, Public art, Site-specific work, Video]
- Online Video
- Images
- Audio/Video
- Details
‘Evidence of reality had never been as pressing as in this slip toward disappearance’ (1)
‘At certain times it seemed to me this transparency was the only solid ground that remained to me, and, if I went forward, it was by resting on my own image thus reflected, while this reflection was perpetuated to infinity, indifferent to the ruins of time. A reflection that had no doubt attracted me by its fragility. The assurance that in resting on it, I would inevitably fall fast, but the fall was infinite, at each moment of the fall the reflection formed again under my steps indestructible’ (1)
Scapelands is a reflection of sorts, where anomalies of spaces within the site have been studied, debated and in turn amplified, expanded upon and even imploded. Process-led and rule based Burgoyne is extending his exploration of repetition, duration and accumulation through drawing in the broadest sense.
Scapelands is a term given by J.F Lyotard to suggest estrangement from a place, as though one is alien to it, the known of landscape becomes unknown.
From Photocopy paper, dry-board markers to highlighters, the ubiquitous media of the office slides from a functional logic and clarity to another whilst paradoxically still bearing order and logic albeit of another kind. In doing so, magnify formal credentials of weight, colour and line.
Scapelands pushes body and site relations proposing we re-negotiate generic space and enter a new and transformative dialogue with space that may both alienate yet offer greater potential than otherwise exists.
Scapelands offers three propositions to navigate. Awkward concentrations of paper, both comical and absurd through process and rules have established themselves at odds with the seemingly clear geometry of the gallery site, having collapsed perhaps the very symmetries of the space. In doing so, pull together an infinite potential of space from a finite and bound sense of place. These rolled spaces are complemented by wall drawings at key points within this long narrow space. The wall works as schematic and playful games seek to debate the space we think we know with a reactivated space we might be now encountering.
These, like all Burgoyne’s works, he sees as propositions only completed or brought into being as a context they are in, through what Deleuze calls their multiple entry and exit points of interpretation and representation. As drawings be they volumetric or spacial they aim to advance the notion of becoming where drawing and meaning is in constant transformation or as Jean Luc Nancy calls 'a truth... showing the infinity of becoming visible; the movement through which appearance is possible cannot be finished thus it is about showing what does not show itself' (2).
Absurd and ridiculous as it maybe, Scapelands is engaged in the serious play of drawing as it grapples with process and idea, thinking, body and space.
Through markmaking, endurance and a tactile rapport with space, Scapelands is a contingent and speculative re-appraisal of limits and all that is fixed.
Through gallery 2 the starting point was the irregularities of 2 doors- 1 whole, full, the other divided by a wall, part blocked – a space disunited from its forming.
Burgoyne sought to bring this form/space anomaly together not represent it. Through rules of measurement and process he was keen to offer up an afterimage through an accumulation of experience of the markmaking, generate in one's mind the space lost. Highlighters draw our attention to things, the text we read, and an aide-memoire no less. In calculating the number of pairs of post-it notes required to make up the lost space Burgoyne offers a fugitive experience of the tension between the temporal and stable-that which exists but cannot be seen. The result both mentally and physically sees walls and floor shift in competing flux as one moves in and around the space.
Indeed only in closing our eyes might we momentarily see the space lost.
Scapelands is drawing as a reality of disappearance where neither inside nor outside may prevail.
(1) Celui qui ne m’accompagnait pas / The one who was standing apart from me
Blanchot. Maurice 1993 Stationhill Literary editions. Translated by Lydia Davis
(2) Le plaisir au dessin/ The Pleasure in Drawing
Nancy. Jean Luc 2013 Fordham University Press New York translated by Philip Armstrong
Preview and public participation event on 10 October 10 2015, 6-9pm.
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit View |