Lag

A solo exhibition at blind alley projects, Fort Worth TX, USA in 2022. The installation in this vitrine space included wall-mounted ceramic sculptures from the series Green, the short film Grove projected onto the ground (in line with the skylight) and the gigantic drawing Tar lines, painted with coal onto the inside of the window.

Tar Lines (installation view)
2022
Sea coal, casein, Texan honey on window glass

I've been thinking about the shapes of time, and how it accretes in things, makes loops and switchbacks, or movements of burying and uncovering.

The lines snaking across the glass follow the meanders of tar around the corner on Boland Street, make-do mends that try their best to patch up the cracks. I made a paint from coal, tar's cousin, that washed up as pebbles on the coast of Suffolk, England – it is several million years of squashed plant material, unearthed and tumbled in a grey sea. The lines also sediment, here and there, the reflected tree across the street.

There is a different kind of time in the film that plays, barely discernible, on the floor. It's an intrusion, a dusting of foreign light that ghosts the space, that almost seems to fit in, but doesn't get away with it. It's hot and the penny is dropping. The sunlight fell a while ago, on concrete, on cracked stone; through a grove of ancient olives, through the leaves of a pecan tree that won't produce this year.


Tar lines (detail from inside; from outside)
2022



‘Lag’ at dusk, with projected video work Grove
2022