I have an idea for an exploded essay.
RM gallery and project space | auckland
Archive space
6th – 23rd June 2018 | solo show
exhibition text
Something that sits between writing and object; between reading and performance; between the privacy of being a viewer or a reader and the interaction of a participant.
Essays are three-dimensional for me; I carry them in my mind and work on passages of text in my head, so the experience of writing an essay is as much in the world as it is in front of a computer screen or on a piece of paper. So I have this idea for an exploded essay that can somehow be replete with objects as well as words; that takes place throughout a space as well as in the time of reading; that allows narrative to be formed through the objects as well as via the words; that the words can be heard as well as read.
But especially, I want to write an exploded essay about unfinished work, about beginnings that went nowhere, about the constant tensions between wanting to make artwork and all the constraints that suspend the making, about the artworks I wish I’d made and never did.
So, this is an exploded essay of missed opportunities; of unfinished work; of ideas had but not acted upon. This is about the sense of missed opportunities and regrets of being an artist, ten-years after graduation.