Bleed 70 (tall thin wet)
This variation of my Bleed cabinets created for Sarah Myerscough Gallery was created for the London Design Festival 2024. I have been working on the Bleed series since 2014. I tend to think about things for very long periods of time, and this contrasting variant has been on my mind for a while so it’s good to show them here at last.
When I created the first pieces in the original series, I wanted to show the transience of material. The chemical reaction between the tannins in the cedar and the iron in the nails, made me think about the dribbling tracks on the surface of Mars that tell us that there was long lost water once on the bone dry terrain. The shiny wet surfaces that create the stains on the cabinets rapidly evaporate leaving behind only the dry black stains.
But equally, each time I have made those pieces there is also a moment when they burst into life. The glint of wetness, tells us when something is very alive, but just at that moment, and our brains are hard wired to notice it. It indicates a present passing state: the shine on perfectly ripe fresh fruit, a dewy field in the morning, an immaculate mirrored Alpine lake. The presence of water is such a fundamental quality that we are attuned to, and we register ‘specular attenuation’ (shininess) instantly for this reason.
I remember listening to a man talk about being lost at sea in a rubber dinghy for many days. Sharks ate the bottom of his dinghy and he found himself in the unenviable position of both dying of dehydration whilst surrounded by salt water, and also being attacked by sharks. He survived by grabbing fish from the frenzied hole below him and, in a delirious state, sucking their eyes out before tossing the poor things back into the sea. He said ‘I just knew that the water in the shiny eyes would keep me alive’.
I wanted to make a contrasting version of this series that talks about that primal appreciation of a passing moment that I feel each time I soak the cabinets.
The Bleed (Wet) series is on show with Sarah Myerscough Gallery at :
Engrained: Material Intelligence
15a Cromwell Garage, London, SW7 2LA
14-22nd September 2024
Bleed 87 (console wet)
Bleed 64 (plank)
Bleed 89 (medicine cabinet wet)
Links to other works in the Bleed series:
