“After his decades-long explorations of American deserts, the British architectural theorist Reyner Banham stood defiant against the historical imperative of understanding deserts as places of self-discovery. In the last pages of Scenes In America Deserta, Banham declares he has done little more than lose himself in these seemingly baron landscapes. In doing so he encountered continual and shifting oscillations from centre to margin, embracing an inexhaustible wonderment over the pursuit of self-knowledge.”
Neal Rock, 2019
Transfer (On The Margins) at Transition, September 6-29, 2019.
Non, 2019 on the facade of Transition by Augustine Carr
Cordon Bleu II, 2019 with Summa Theologica VII, 2018 by Augustine Carr and Untitled, 2019 by Neal Rock
Untitled, 2019 by Neal Rock
Photos by Ben Westoby.
An from extract from GLOSS IN SIX SCENES, 2019 by Isobel Wohl
“Around the corner from a greengrocer’s, three C-prints show polaroids that show small clay objects against a clay background. I can see the impressions of fingertips. I can see nervous activity. We enter the gallery space. A boat, a tic, a finish, a tongue, a blind, lying on a black metal frame. I see it from its contours and from the light that slides over them, pools in their crooks and junctures. It shows me a dark shape. What I don’t know is its first form, plasticine or clay somewhere else. On another frame lie two open Cordon Bleu cookbooks, and on their pages black masses weight instructions that tell me how to make oranges en surprise. In the photograph that accompanies the recipe light from some bulb in some photoshoot falls on meringue and orange. I want to touch sleek sides and rounded tops, touch the object from which touch was removed in replication, expansion, and lacquer in order to make the finish that makes me want to touch the thing that was removed from me. Sight is most tender where it borders and so forms its limit. You may have held it in your hand before you knew what it was. ”
