devolve

we met in nottingham today to write our proposal for the wirksworth festival, we think it would be great to do the next stage of our project during the festival in september.

the quality of being nothing 

'things are either devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness'

This project began as a three week exploration on the point at which something comes into being, the moment at which something ceases being nothing and emerges as a recognised form.

Limited to a stack of white paper in an empty room we began to investigate our theme.

Everyday we found ourselves performing the same action: approaching the plinth, removing a single sheet of paper, and returning to our desk to translate the thing conceived in our mind into some actual form.

This action became almost ritualistic, and the paper became almost sacred, each piece containing the potential to become something significant.

This process inevitably came to an end, and we then found ourselves faced with the point at which something ceases to be.

The remnants of our three weeks are currently contained in three cardboard boxes, the individual pieces now existing as lonely figures, devoid of their true meaning. The invisible connections between the individual pieces are now lost, their silent interactions no longer occurring.

We often deny the fact that things are impermanent, holding on to objects that provide evidence of our existence, convincing ourselves of our own significance in order to avoid a feeling of existential anxiety. An object is more than just its physical being, it is the container of the invisible. The carrier of history, knowledge and emotions. An object can comfort our insecurities, soothe our desire to be remembered, and ease our fear of forgetting or being forgotten.

It is this anxiety and fear that we now aim to explore.

Inverting the plinth to become a water tank we will begin a process of taking a single piece of our work, walking to the tank, and submerging the piece into the water. All the pieces of artworks made during the three-week period of the residency will eventually dissolve into pulp. Confronting our natural desire to maintain things in their current form, we are able to once again challenge the concept of nothingness and experiment whether it is possible to transport the contained emotion that they previously represented.

Through the destruction of our creations we are questioning whether we are causing a premature end to their transient lives, or enabling a beginning to a new life, allowing the chance for something to emerge from and into nothingness.

In releasing our pieces from the constraints of their current form we can embrace the value of potential, as they once again become alive with possibilities.