Art makes physical a view point, feeling or response to the world, or sense of ourselves within it. It can also be a material play, creating meaning through haptic conversation and dialogues with stuff, which then echoes existing works using a similar language.
BRASS NOTES
tomorrow’s fine
tell me later
all is well
looks like it
can’t wait
and you
These ’notes’ are proposed to be situated in the arboretum, to be found or encountered. They are curious and differ from other lists of names, dates or phrases of valour or loss seen on the plaques and monuments across the site. They are notes of short, affectionate reassurances and confirmations taken from fragments of personal phone calls, texts or letters, which suggest continuity and stability. Deep etched into brass blocks, such partial conversations between lovers, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and friends become memorialised - something slight that was said, written or typed, now permanently holds a poignant significance.
Each short phrase is purposely everyday and prosaic, ones we all regularly use to reinforce love and share news and experience, where ‘we will speak later’ is captured evidence of I’m still here and everything is fine. They are endings to other expected beginnings. However, when this fails, when death happens, we are left with the fragments, an eternal silence of no response. There is no more.
We carry such texts in our pockets and in boxes, lost for words.
Tomorrow is fine, can’t wait, and you.....
Proposal for the National Memorial Arboretum