Wood, matches, rope, paint
Gallery size: 12m high x 20m long x 5m wide
Towers: Wooden splints, painted whit
Height – 4.9 metres
Diameter – 2.5 metres (variable)
Walls: Hundreds of carved redgum pieces, painted white
Rope: Synthetic paint on rope. Length – 30 metres
Photos: Kenneth Pleban
There is a kind of magic with the word art; it makes you believe that things can be transformed. The reason for my choice of splints of wood for the towers was partly that there had to be so many of them. Like grains of sand, cells, they were to make up one big thing. Each splint could represent a person, a soul. Caught within this is the idea of numbers, so many of them, so close, and of their becoming one. From a distance, the shape shimmers. The viewer draws closer and closer: What are they?At last it is possible to recognize little splints, painted white to accent the purity of the image. A white shadow, creating shadows.
Asher Bilu
a day later
and i have after-images
of light
and a breathing ‘spine’ of colours.
and a memory
of remembered-collective-sorrow,
intangible and barely acknowledged,
in the midst of soaring quiet.
the icons of whitened wood
around the walls,
clean white on white,
remind me
of time as well as space:
the time it took
to grow that way,
to be noticed,
to be given singular definition
and to turn into metaphor.
the towers,
though abstract,
seem to me
an act of love.
i hope the work
gives you back
as least as much
as you put in
to its creation.
Heather Shain Ellyard 16.9.93