The Gorgeous Nothings, 2022
Exhibition catalogue for The Gorgeous Nothings, Bartha Contemporary, London.
Curated by Susan Morris. With introduction by Morris and essay ‘Folds’, by Rye Dag Holmboe
From the Introduction: In making an exhibition of artworks that ‘correspond’ with Emily Dickinson’s envelope writings, I’m picking up on Susan Howe’s suggestion that the manuscripts be understood as ‘visual productions’, a theme developed more fully by Rye Dag Holmboe in his essay ‘Folds’, published below.
The thinking behind this show started many years ago with an image I tore out of a magazine and taped to my studio wall. Now stripped by the sun of all colour but blue, it shows a piece of twisted wire dipped in plaster and paint. Just 7.9 centimetres high, it is Jackson Pollock’s Untitled, 1949. I envied whatever it was that it took to make this piece, and wished for something of its compact energy in my own work. Visitors to my studio — other artists, usually — told of similar things hanging around in their own. Not necessarily meant to be viewed as art, but key to the other things that they were trying to make. Something gorgeous; (next to) nothing — a throwaway, perhaps.
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