Objects best shown to a stranger, at Mysterious Objects at Noon (Singapore and London)
Collaboration with Katriona Beales
Curated by Gavin Maughflin and Suzanne de Emmony
Taking as a starting point wide ranging conversations about life in London and Singapore respectively, Katriona and Shubigi have based their contributions to Mysterious Objects at Noon around seemingly mundane objects that have a peculiar resonance to them alone, embedded as they are with family memories and myth, becoming more than heirloom or keepsake. As the primary framer, facilitator and limiting factor to their collaborations, the screen between them came to be the corpus on which they wrote their stories, the empty geography and the arid wastes between the dead and those who remember them. Given that a lot is said about shrinking distances (and this technologically aided collaboration referenced that as well), the geographical gap remained as important as the virtual attempts made to (futilely) erase that gap. For Objects best shown to a stranger Katriona used 3D visualisation software to capture and translate a broken porcelain figurine, while Shubigi repeatedly ground and sifted hardened porcelain clay into dust.
[We spoke of genealogy and heirlooms; we each had a memento – Katriona’s a figurine cracked in half, mine a single whiskey glass, its twin shattered to bits in a suitcase. We spoke of ourselves as migrants, carrying the dead with us in porcelain, plaster and glass - the brittle old bones of our portable ancestors. I read about an ancient mortuary unearthed in Bolivia, used by nomadic llama drovers whose itinerant existence meant they couldn’t revisit grave sites. Boiled in quicklime the flesh and fat melted away, and once exposed to the air turned into plaster, setting free the bones to be carried as relics.]
A rhyme, by Shubigi, in poor taste:
Fee-fi-fo-fum
We break the bread we lick the crumbs
Be they live
Or be they read
We’ll grind their bones
We’ll bake our bread
More at Gavin and Suzanne's web-blog for the project
Taking as a starting point wide ranging conversations about life in London and Singapore respectively, Katriona and Shubigi have based their contributions to Mysterious Objects at Noon around seemingly mundane objects that have a peculiar resonance to them alone, embedded as they are with family memories and myth, becoming more than heirloom or keepsake. As the primary framer, facilitator and limiting factor to their collaborations, the screen between them came to be the corpus on which they wrote their stories, the empty geography and the arid wastes between the dead and those who remember them. Given that a lot is said about shrinking distances (and this technologically aided collaboration referenced that as well), the geographical gap remained as important as the virtual attempts made to (futilely) erase that gap. For Objects best shown to a stranger Katriona used 3D visualisation software to capture and translate a broken porcelain figurine, while Shubigi repeatedly ground and sifted hardened porcelain clay into dust.
[We spoke of genealogy and heirlooms; we each had a memento – Katriona’s a figurine cracked in half, mine a single whiskey glass, its twin shattered to bits in a suitcase. We spoke of ourselves as migrants, carrying the dead with us in porcelain, plaster and glass - the brittle old bones of our portable ancestors. I read about an ancient mortuary unearthed in Bolivia, used by nomadic llama drovers whose itinerant existence meant they couldn’t revisit grave sites. Boiled in quicklime the flesh and fat melted away, and once exposed to the air turned into plaster, setting free the bones to be carried as relics.]
A rhyme, by Shubigi, in poor taste:
Fee-fi-fo-fum
We break the bread we lick the crumbs
Be they live
Or be they read
We’ll grind their bones
We’ll bake our bread
More at Gavin and Suzanne's web-blog for the project