“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result”
Unknown
I felt that perhaps I had gone insane as I looked back through the piles of almost identical cyanotype prints I made in creating the work inheritance. The process was the point, the exploration of making the same thing but with subtly varying materials to see how an object reads as it all but disappears.
Perhaps trying too hard to make something that has meaning could be the definition of insanity. Or the realisation at the end of the project that I could have saved two weeks by applying the discovery that awagami paper makes the most beautiful detailed prints. This knowledge could have been applied to the piece I was making in rice-paper that turned each print into a three day process as I became obsessed with trying to stretch and flatten it so as to get an even print. I then had to have very strong words with myself to stop trying to remake the piece yet again on the day before flying to Melbourne – something that actually would not have been possible.
Radiant Pavilion, Melbourne, September 2024. Installation: Inheritance, 2024
cyanotype on rice paper
Locket – “a small ornamental case, typically made of gold or silver, worn round a person’s neck on a chain and used to hold things of sentimental value, such as a photograph” – Oxford Languages
In the end though the process was just what I had to go through.
When I got to have some time with Manon in person in Melbourne (the main reason I was so excited to get to Radiant Pavilion) I asked her if there was a way to detour the time spent going down a rabbit hole like this. I am not sure of her exact words but the essence is (said with her infectious laugh):
“no when you are in the middle of it that is how it is. You can not see these things, there is no way around.”
There are no short cuts. I am learning to sit in the space and even enjoy the process. Accept that each step – such as an exhibition is not the end point but just a moment in time. The work can and will be better if it is picked up again and continued…