Work: EMPTINESS
Medium: Plaster, heschen, steel armatures, chicken wire & bluestone rock.
Location: Canberra AUS
Date: 2017
Details:
EMPTINESS investigates the vessel and how line and negative space conveys a sense of weightlessness of an otherwise dense & heavy object. Initially a foray into plaster and abstract sculptural forms, the themes related to emptiness connect meditative and spiritual narratives with the sense of social vaccum felt in the provincial capital.
Research:
A PHILOSOPHY OF EMTPINESS by Gay Watson, is a glimpse at the philosophical beliefs within Mahayana Buddhism is revealed. Amongst the thinkers and makers referenced by Watson in this book are Albert Camus, Sartre, the Dalai Lama and Homi K. Bhabha (pre-eminent writer on the works of Anish Kapoor); their respective interpretations on the conceptual fields that ‘Emptiness’ might represent.
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Quotes and Texts from A Philosophy of Emptiness (2014):
Jean-Paul Sartre viewed the 'fundamental absurdity' of all things and attempts to pierce the veil of perception.. Which leads to disgust and wonder.. His disgust and nausea increases in observing the mundane things in life and in qualities of objects including colour and form... until he is finally confronted with the pure thing stripped of language and definition; a moment akin to 'transcendence' in the pursuit of Emptiness through meditation; an experiential indifference, versus cerebral despondence.
In reality this mentality of crisis was shared by all the existentialists including Kirkegaard, Nietsche, Heidegger and Sartre... And his true character was one that valued friendship and nature - he was a champion of the ordinary... And, as with Jean Paul Sartre in the novel 'Nausea', was able to see through the ordinary and question the existence of the object; it's meaning and its tangibility.
"What we think is real - our thoughts and feelings about people and things - exists by merely labelling by the mind...those able to attain knowledge of a state of emptiness are able to realise that their thoughts are merely illusions from the labelling of the mind." (Dalai Lama)
"...it has to do with issues that lie beneath the material, with fact that materials are there to make something else possible... the things that are available, or the non-physical things, the intellectual things, the possibilities that are available through the material ... the practice of true making occurs only when the material and the non-material tangentially touch ... The sign of emptiness expands the limits of available space." (Homi K. Bhabha)
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A Philosophy of Emptiness by Gay Watson (UK: Reaktion, 2014).
All works developed and presented in the sculpture studios, ANU SoA, Canberra, AUS 2017.
Medium: Plaster, heschen, steel armatures, chicken wire & bluestone rock.
Location: Canberra AUS
Date: 2017
Details:
EMPTINESS investigates the vessel and how line and negative space conveys a sense of weightlessness of an otherwise dense & heavy object. Initially a foray into plaster and abstract sculptural forms, the themes related to emptiness connect meditative and spiritual narratives with the sense of social vaccum felt in the provincial capital.
Research:
A PHILOSOPHY OF EMTPINESS by Gay Watson, is a glimpse at the philosophical beliefs within Mahayana Buddhism is revealed. Amongst the thinkers and makers referenced by Watson in this book are Albert Camus, Sartre, the Dalai Lama and Homi K. Bhabha (pre-eminent writer on the works of Anish Kapoor); their respective interpretations on the conceptual fields that ‘Emptiness’ might represent.
--
Quotes and Texts from A Philosophy of Emptiness (2014):
Jean-Paul Sartre viewed the 'fundamental absurdity' of all things and attempts to pierce the veil of perception.. Which leads to disgust and wonder.. His disgust and nausea increases in observing the mundane things in life and in qualities of objects including colour and form... until he is finally confronted with the pure thing stripped of language and definition; a moment akin to 'transcendence' in the pursuit of Emptiness through meditation; an experiential indifference, versus cerebral despondence.
In reality this mentality of crisis was shared by all the existentialists including Kirkegaard, Nietsche, Heidegger and Sartre... And his true character was one that valued friendship and nature - he was a champion of the ordinary... And, as with Jean Paul Sartre in the novel 'Nausea', was able to see through the ordinary and question the existence of the object; it's meaning and its tangibility.
"What we think is real - our thoughts and feelings about people and things - exists by merely labelling by the mind...those able to attain knowledge of a state of emptiness are able to realise that their thoughts are merely illusions from the labelling of the mind." (Dalai Lama)
"...it has to do with issues that lie beneath the material, with fact that materials are there to make something else possible... the things that are available, or the non-physical things, the intellectual things, the possibilities that are available through the material ... the practice of true making occurs only when the material and the non-material tangentially touch ... The sign of emptiness expands the limits of available space." (Homi K. Bhabha)
__
A Philosophy of Emptiness by Gay Watson (UK: Reaktion, 2014).
All works developed and presented in the sculpture studios, ANU SoA, Canberra, AUS 2017.
