INVERTING THE CANAL
Ante Pavilion Competition 2019
The pavilion celebrates the mere presence of things that are in a continual state of change. As opposed to the institutionalized form of the museum, this is an ever-changing collection reflecting how the acceleration of progress is at such a rate that everyday objects become artifacts in our own time. We witness several transitions within our own lifetime, where objects become obsolete and disposed of, meaning we no longer form long-term intimate connections which create the desire to collect, keep, look after, care for.
In the ephemerality of the transient canal, traces of people’s daily life and later clear attachment to the canal can be observed.
A photo of a man with a turban in front of a colonnade of trefoiled arches is pasted to the wall. He connected his eastern origins with his western life. My own assumptions. He may have grown up in London and this was a visit to make a connection with his ancestory. Either way, associations and significance had been made through a symbolic process. The mossy brickwork is interrupted by stains of graffiti that has also suffered from the rain, the maker’s original image absorbed by the brickwork. My auditory awareness is heightened, the ring of the bell is received by the arch in time for me to move against the wall, my hands pressed against the uneven brick. A pace forwards, the row of glossy photographs with a plywood backing continues until dried yellow paste remains, a gap between two photos where someone had forcefully removed it. An photo of a ring with a plea for help revealed in the text below ‘LOST RING’, to capture passersby attention, the advert in a plastic sleeve an stapled to a metal pole on the side of the path. A sentimental object that could be found at the bottom of the canal…
Human activity is intervening with silty canal bed, the industrial locks in place to control the flow of boats and produce on the water surface. Simultaneously, the annual migration of eels from the Sarragaso Sea to the canals to mature, is temporarily interrupted. However, there is nothing that can control pure human flow of activity in any cross section of the canal.
Driftwood, chains and metal grills have collected along the other side of the canal. A house boat resident in a moment of thought between action and pause, drops his keys. He would use his device to retrieve it as those keys were essential to his well being. However, recently, this is becoming a place to hide illicit behavior, weapons and ‘valued’ goods locked in containers. Coins, which the bank will not process. Ominous World War two grenades and steel kitchen knives. A gardener’s spade interlocked in a Mangled bicycle wheel. Chains and Metal grills. Car windscreen wipers. ‘You can’t see it, it does not exist’. Or in the words of Jasper Johns, ‘An object that tells of the loss, destruction, disappearance of objects, does not speak of itself. It Tells of others. DELUGE’
In a world of over-exposure, production and consumption, whilst some people toss waste without thought or awareness, the curious now use Magnet Fishing on the canal as a way to re-seek significance. A game of treasure hunt.
There is an ambiguity between the anticipation for loss, which initiates the desire to find, and the act of preservation. Inverting the canal’s invisible environment to an exposed position on a Haggerston Rooftop provides an opportunity to find, reclaim and rediscover objects and people’s hidden desires.
Found objects, deemed outmoded below the canal surface, are taken to the rooftop and placed on a shelf as part of a changing collection. One side reveals openings to place or drop the objects onto the other side of this time capsule, the whole hidden from view. Once deposited, you enter the timber structure enclosing a dark room acting as a camera obscura, which projects the collection as an inverted image on a piece of scrim. The objects are distorted in the process of projection, revealing for a moment another perception of the everyday objects.
My Own Memory: Kyrgyz Tulips
Clay Relief from an Etched Zinc Plate
Ceramic pieces form part of the timber structure, the angled planes capturing the light at different times of day to reveal abstract shapes. The shadows are traces of the making process, done by all the hunters, pressing the found objects and materials into the locally harvested London clay from the canal itself, prior to forming the final ceramic piece. The clay pieces are indexes, ghostly traces of the departed objects. In pressing the key into the soft clay, the surface is receptive of figure as well as the rust residue and the , the passage of time in the canal.
Its presence is amplified by the rising sun, witness to an anteriority. Both the imprints and the camera obscura are activated by the sun.
The folded metal roof and its openings is influenced by the light in the month of May, when the Canal is most active. The form protects the scrim screen from the sun’s rays in order to reveal the image, which can be seen from the house boats, canoes, pedestrians, cyclists and runners present on the canal daily. This may entice them to pause and imagine what may lie beyond their reflection in the canal.
Camera Obscura Tests to understand change in light, lense and depth of field.