I really should be working, but when blogspiration hits (I just coined that, don’t steal it), you have to post. A few days ago I was looking at Memory, Dwelling, Ruins, an art installation at a house in Merrick’s Beach back in February. There were some REALLY cool pieces, a few of my favorites are below.

I am seriously digging on Robbie Rowland’s cross in the kitchen floor. For that matter, thematically I also really like Susan Jacobs’ deconstruction of the bedroom and Campbell Drake & James Carey’s deconstruction of the roof. There’s a video of Robbie Rowland working on the cross that disappointed me a little, I envisioned him cutting the cross one tiny section at a time and leaving it attached to the floor but he cut the whole thing out and then reattached it. Having said that, do yourself a favor and check out some of his other work - he likes to cut things into tiny shreds and dammit, its cool. I can’t begin to guess how Susan Jacobs did her piece, though, really amazing. Matt Morrow’s takes a second look for sure, all the objects in the room are made of wood.

Simon Cooper is a professor at Monash University that likes to be long-winded and say pompous shit, but he’s got a pretty thorough discussion of the installation as a whole over here. My favorite line:

“…a house whose presence as an emerging work of art was only possible due to its immanent destruction.”

That just struck me as really cool. Spoiler alert, I’m about to say some pompous shit now. Humanity reminds me a lot of an emerging work of art, not only possible due to its immanent destruction but largely due to its lack of awareness that the destruction is just around the bend. Even on an individual basis I think people themselves are slowly moving through their lives toward true art, with death waiting to laugh in your face just as you start to get a handle on things. The house is exactly that, moving ever closer to being something more than a house, probably happy as can be, bunch of company over sawing and painting things and so on only to meet the wrecking ball one week later.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 8:39 am and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.