Bokashi

Exploring how to present the cabbage leaves and kitchen waste casts. Putting them in circles, maybe a bit obvious. Rows, scattered… Although the casts are beautiful they lean towards a tightness in their whiteness, so to speak, so I want to avoid an overly self conscious presentation modality, like in neat rows or a tight circle. What it is all saying to me is that they aren’t there yet, they are a technical accomplishment in showing how I can use paper to draw in a different way, how I can speak to circularity, but they aren’t there yet as art works. They haven’t become yet.

I am worried they are faintly ridiculous and need Sesame Street googly eyes and will break into songs about the alphabet. Gahh. These are challenging me…

Tom mentioned they speak to preservation, the memorialisation and the fragility seem to want to pop them into a frame and hang them on the wall. I really enjoyed painting them and I felt that made them into something, but conceptually it just commodifies them and takes them out of the circularity, which I think is the central point. I think they would be beautiful framed and I may just have to try it to see what it does, painted, unpainted, framed, unframed. I just instinctively feel it misses the point as much as I am drawn to beautiful framing and the memorialisation is attractive to me, holding on rather than letting go.

For the final show I think I will take them and just use the day there to play with them and see how they look in a big space wihtout worrying too much about ‘showing’ them. It’s also possible that this project is just for me, for my learning and to develop my concepts.