Saturday 20 June 2015

Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop Micro Residency Artists 2015/16 Announced

Link to Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop

Monday 15 June 2015

Halhjem Helleristninger

From this blood was made the sea and the lakes,
From this flesh the earth, and from this hair the trees,
From these bones the mountain; rocks and pebbles from the teeth.

It was a secret, hidden place. The dark, almost purple hued crag of rock loomed out; a natural incision into the otherwise soft and mossy track. At first it seemed that it would reveal a dark and hollow space within, but it was simply a surface. The rock was porous and weather beaten.

Such a flood of blood flowed from his sore and gaping wounds, that all were drowned, except for a couple of lovers, who escaped by climbing into a narrow oaken casket. They were carried along by the current of thick flowing blood, still warm and pulsing from the throbbing wound. They clung onto each other whilst being jolted forcefully together by the rhythmical pounding of the waves against the sides of the casket.

A great, yawning, cavernous void opened out onto the fjord. The cold, dark water lay silently beneath the arched crevice of rock, seeping in between the tiniest of cracks, and leaving behind a slimy coating of rusty red as it withdrew at low tide. There appeared to be total darkness inside the cave, a place seemingly without walls, leading on and on and on.

The lips surrounding the darkness of the interior are parched and bleached by sunlight. Just inside, the air is thick with moisture as the water evaporates in the heat. Further on, the air seems to clutch at one, like the cold and icy fingers of death clinging on to a living body; caressing its back and loosely smothering its face. Yet there is a stirring in the water, as though something within has come to life.

The carvings had been rounded and worn away over time, and had been highlighted in red paint. Things fade and disappear over time; they shrink back into the world of matter, formless and nameless, much as they may have begun. The mists of time have already erased their meaning, despite the most valiant efforts to preserve and interpret them.

As the carcass decayed, maggots appeared in its flesh. They fed upon the rotting matter, and as they did so, their form evolved into something resembling man. Their skin hardened from the soft and translucent membrane of a maggot, so that they could withstand the light of the sun and the cold of night, although they continued to live in the earth and rocks, burrowing deep into the corpse, which had first sustained them.

The skull was lifted high up above the earth, and from this became the sky,
The brain was thrown up towards the crown of the skull with such might,
That in unravelling it became the clouds.

Documentation from Kuenstlerhaus Dortmund 

Still from video loop