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locution n. 1. a particular form of expression; a phrase or expression. 2. a style of speech or verbal expression; phraseology.
(from Latin locutio an utterance, from locui to speak)
Locutions is a body of work that I have been working on for more than two years now. The body of work that I was working on, was composed of both paintings and objects/small sculptures. Both explore the same subject but through different media.
This work was informed by many things, but the most defining was that of the notion of duende.
With this subject I was influenced by the writings of Federico Garcia Lorca, most notably his essay Play and Theory of the Duende, first delivered as a lecture in 1933, as well as Deep Song, a lecture given in 1922.
From here I went to the writings of Jean Baudrillard and The System of Collecting, as a way of understanding the significance of objects, and how investment creates meaning:
Nick Cave follows these thoughts also in his lecture given in 1999 on writing the The Love Song. He writes:
The Love Song exists to fill with language, the silence between ourselves and God, to decrease the distance between the temporal and the divine. He goes on to say that …Through these songs I have been able to mythologise the ordinary events of my life, lifting them from the temporal plane and hurling them way into the stars.
From here I went to the writings of Jean Baudrillard and The System of Collecting, as a way of understanding the significance of objects, and how investment creates meaning:
Among the various meanings of the French word objet, the Littre dictionary gives this: 'Anything which is the cause or subject of a passion. Figuratively and most typically; the loved object.'
...the objects in our lives, as distinct from the way we make use of them at a given moment, represent something much more, something profoundly related to subjectivity: for while the object is a resistant material body, it is also, simultaneously, a mental realm over which I hold sway, a thing whose meaning is governed by myself alone. It is all my own, the object of my passion.
This lead me to researching boxes.
box n. 1. a case or receptacle…with a lid…a small shelter
In The Collector’s Book of Boxes Marian Klamkin writes:
From the time when man first began to accumulate personal possessions he has required something in which to store them. From the need for a safe and easily transported container evolved the ubiquitous box.
…A study of boxes is a study of the changing values of civilised man, for by learning about the various uses of old boxes we acquire knowledge about those things that man felt were his most precious belongings.
…The box has been used to protect, contain, or simply to decorate, for centuries.
So my Locutions exhibition has now separated into 2 bodies of work.
And the new work which is object based, is now called
Locutions (the loved object)
This work will be exhibited in September at Craft Victoria.
Locutions, comprising 9 watercolours and 5 large canvases will find a home somewhere else.
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