Big Rock Candy Mountain
15 Mar - 14 Apr 2013
BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
Aaron Angell, Freya Douglas Morris, Alex Rathbone, Jolanta Rejs
Text by Robert Spragg
15 March – 14 April 2013
A Sentient Sea
* Stymied by his physical incarceration and tired by feelings of intense jealousy for the yelping sparrow that often chose to rest for a while by his window, J decided to return to his small stuffy bedroom (which at least did not face the garden that projects his lack of freedom against that of a mocking sparrow).
Mainly he thought it would just be nice to walk into the forest, to disappear from this brittle predicament, in search of something else. As naïve and unwise as it may be to conceive of a place without jurisdiction recently J, at times of solitude, had taken to imagining a terrain more desirable than the one in which he inhabited.
The land here is made from clay, kneaded and encouraged with hands from the earth; spiraling towers of clay festoon the forest, people often stand beside their doubles. Two gnarled, hunchbacked craftsmen note with glee to passersby the necessity of man’s relationship to matter. To go against the wishes of a material is to tackle history, or so they say. Scatological product cobbled together with clay is presented with no consideration of how it is to be historicised.
In this country of excess, coinage is redundant and vagrants stroll, drunk on local grog.
The hippy dialectic of storyteller and listener makes sure bartered tales have greater value than physical money. Language here becomes an exotic commodity. A subject known to the people corrals a horde into following him. Repeatedly walking back into the texture of a single memory he recalls of something held within a sentient sea.
“If there are those among you, that would follow, to a place without stage, without physicality, a place of plentitude, if you like, you should be rewarded with a bounty of experiential riches”
Opposed en masse to the material world the group set off in search of such rewards.
A great anthropomorphic forest of ogival trees and totemic fungi protrudes from the ground, littered by various abandoned signs of industries past; sunken craters emit intoxicating aromas into the general direction of the group. In one anomalous area a rut forges through the dense forestation. Errant hands hack at the overgrowth with long knives, revealing a path towards a beached sea.
From this point on, they travel north towards the headland that marks the point of the subject’s intended destination. Finding a path that runs parallel with the tide, they manoeuvre with haste around the circumference of a large rock face for fear of a landslide. A serpentine path reaches out to an adjacent island—sitting on the horizon from their vantage point, like a liquid abstraction. The island plays host to a rising ecology—a data farm—harvesting a dissident society where memory is data and the inhabitants dine out on infinite freedom, or so the story goes.
Often and for long periods of time the subject of this tale has wandered out to this point, merely to observe the island, being both terrified and drawn to its possibilities. On this occasion the appearance of the tailored path providing direct access to it is a new development. The group approach the path, which is part quagmire, with trepidation yet are reassured by the conviction of their leader.
A heavy, bleak rain begins to fall.
Under the deluge the group realise that the material they stand on is of little integrity. With the sea seeping under foot and from above, the path collapses. Spades of the path fall away, taking bodies with it.
All fall bar their leader, spared by a fortuitous plateau on which he stands. Elements congeal to form a soup of earthly matter; as was the intention of the pathʼs maker—a structure that encourages its own entropic rot.
After taking in the scene around him, where all manner of debris eddies his feet, he attempts to collect his thoughts which turn towards the forest craftsmen—this path bearing all the hallmarks of their hands.
The subject sits back, ebbing away from his present, occupied by the patina of the islandʼs pure surface. At this exact moment, at this exact time of day he sees something that he has never seen. In the distance the island appears to be reconstituting itself, perpetually expanding and collapsing.
Robert Spragg
Aaron Angell, Freya Douglas Morris, Alex Rathbone, Jolanta Rejs
Text by Robert Spragg
15 March – 14 April 2013
A Sentient Sea
* Stymied by his physical incarceration and tired by feelings of intense jealousy for the yelping sparrow that often chose to rest for a while by his window, J decided to return to his small stuffy bedroom (which at least did not face the garden that projects his lack of freedom against that of a mocking sparrow).
Mainly he thought it would just be nice to walk into the forest, to disappear from this brittle predicament, in search of something else. As naïve and unwise as it may be to conceive of a place without jurisdiction recently J, at times of solitude, had taken to imagining a terrain more desirable than the one in which he inhabited.
The land here is made from clay, kneaded and encouraged with hands from the earth; spiraling towers of clay festoon the forest, people often stand beside their doubles. Two gnarled, hunchbacked craftsmen note with glee to passersby the necessity of man’s relationship to matter. To go against the wishes of a material is to tackle history, or so they say. Scatological product cobbled together with clay is presented with no consideration of how it is to be historicised.
In this country of excess, coinage is redundant and vagrants stroll, drunk on local grog.
The hippy dialectic of storyteller and listener makes sure bartered tales have greater value than physical money. Language here becomes an exotic commodity. A subject known to the people corrals a horde into following him. Repeatedly walking back into the texture of a single memory he recalls of something held within a sentient sea.
“If there are those among you, that would follow, to a place without stage, without physicality, a place of plentitude, if you like, you should be rewarded with a bounty of experiential riches”
Opposed en masse to the material world the group set off in search of such rewards.
A great anthropomorphic forest of ogival trees and totemic fungi protrudes from the ground, littered by various abandoned signs of industries past; sunken craters emit intoxicating aromas into the general direction of the group. In one anomalous area a rut forges through the dense forestation. Errant hands hack at the overgrowth with long knives, revealing a path towards a beached sea.
From this point on, they travel north towards the headland that marks the point of the subject’s intended destination. Finding a path that runs parallel with the tide, they manoeuvre with haste around the circumference of a large rock face for fear of a landslide. A serpentine path reaches out to an adjacent island—sitting on the horizon from their vantage point, like a liquid abstraction. The island plays host to a rising ecology—a data farm—harvesting a dissident society where memory is data and the inhabitants dine out on infinite freedom, or so the story goes.
Often and for long periods of time the subject of this tale has wandered out to this point, merely to observe the island, being both terrified and drawn to its possibilities. On this occasion the appearance of the tailored path providing direct access to it is a new development. The group approach the path, which is part quagmire, with trepidation yet are reassured by the conviction of their leader.
A heavy, bleak rain begins to fall.
Under the deluge the group realise that the material they stand on is of little integrity. With the sea seeping under foot and from above, the path collapses. Spades of the path fall away, taking bodies with it.
All fall bar their leader, spared by a fortuitous plateau on which he stands. Elements congeal to form a soup of earthly matter; as was the intention of the pathʼs maker—a structure that encourages its own entropic rot.
After taking in the scene around him, where all manner of debris eddies his feet, he attempts to collect his thoughts which turn towards the forest craftsmen—this path bearing all the hallmarks of their hands.
The subject sits back, ebbing away from his present, occupied by the patina of the islandʼs pure surface. At this exact moment, at this exact time of day he sees something that he has never seen. In the distance the island appears to be reconstituting itself, perpetually expanding and collapsing.
Robert Spragg