The wind is whipping up outside in the dark, the sea is mere moments away from the house to both the east and the west, earlier as I walked it's western edge it sat between the pale sands and the cloud filled sky like deep grey blue steel, unearthly in its hue and observance of horizonal geometry. Every time I looked back to it from whatever else my eyes were resting on, it arrested me again with it's peculiar depth and saturation.
After encouraging sprays and mists of light purple flowers that I swear have just appeared overnight, I turned inwards from the sea towards the rifle range, taking a slightly off-track route, although careful where I placed my feet for fear of stepping on a plant. Under a tree, with one of its four corners lodged into the ground slanted a meter squared slab of iron, deeply rusted, and even more deeply bitten into by the tracks and perforations of munitions. Gorgeous, gaping orifices, some messy and substantial as if an enormous gauged projectile had ravished it, others more precise in their spherical punctures but still making undulations in the surrounding areas so as to evidence how the metal moved with the force and thrust of the projectile.
I laughed, but this is what I wanted to do.
Shoot metal.
I thought about Laila Pullien’s shot copper work, Bonnie and Clyde.
And of Cornelia Parker’s Suit, shot by a pearl necklace, 1995–1995
I placed my figures into the gaping wounds marveling in recognition of how certain morphologies, vocabularies and tropes insist across decades. Remembering for a moment clay slabs I ruptured with fingers all the way back in the first-year sculpture rotation in my undergraduate degree. Entry points not dissimilar to those in today's rusty target. Of course I regretted the absence of my phone with it's camera as I sat down to draw it. I tried to make rubbings and soaked some pages in the sea allowing them to saturate and then take up the imprints of the metal. Damn it, why did I not bring some decent paper? I thought of printmaker Terry James Conrads work. Perhaps I need to do a printing course. I fished out fallen layers of rust from the underside, whilst carefully checking for snakes, and layed the rust onto the small pages, hopefully they will stay overnight, absorb more rain or moisture and take some more impressions be it atmospheric of from the metal.
This is the object, I thought.
THE object.
The tipping point.
What THE object is can only be understood in the moment of apprehension, there is no prior concept, no wish, no missing, no absence or sense of lack. It presents itself fully formed and there it is. The island starts to come together, to make sense. To me at least, in respect of this residency.
I wish I had some paper, some big, thick, water absorbent sheets of paper.
I realise how múch I love paper and metal. Together.
Sometimes it really is a case of moving, walking, being with long enough until there is a recognition, and it generally is a re-cognition.
Earlier in the day I quipped in an email about the travail on the island. Beau Travail with its military (Foreign Legion) outpost flashed into my mind. Military legacies here on Örö, echoes of disciplinary choreographies that compose both the corps collective and the individual ones. Themes beautifully exposed in Claire Denis' film, a perennial reference in my own work. I imagined making small dances - training choreographies, one for each of the military facilities ie bunkers, artillery positions etc. scattered on the island. Damn, I wish I had my phone to document, I wonder if I can come back and shoot them another time? But perhaps they don’t require a document, they can be private, unseen.