Endless
2022
Digital photographs
The hexafoil is an ancient geometric symbol, created using a two-pointed scribing instrument and a repeated circular pattern. As ‘Daisy Wheels’, they have a centuries-old association across Britain and Ireland as an apotropaic symbol, scored into wooden doors, stone walls and other surfaces, to keep evil at bay and the power of witchcraft on the side of the user.
This work evolved from a conversation with photographer Sarah Howe during the UK Lockdowns of 2020-21, regarding her commission to produce a filmwork and her decision to collaborate with a number of other artists. Meeting, walking and sitting on Peckham Rye near our respective homes, we discussed the extended periods we’d spent indoors, and the effect it had on our heads: working, not working, thinking, spacing out, and occasionally noticing subjective incremental, temporal and spatial changes.
Back in the studio, I started noticing coffee rings forming on surfaces, left by myself and studiomates, and later drifting into summer, the condensation stains on wooden tables from iced cans. These accidental constellations sparked a familiar apophenic attention for me, as I became more familiar with venturing further into other spaces again, eventually seeing circular patterns all around. A lost umbrella cover by the Serpentine, alchemical diagrams, snacks, management guides, crop circles .. some were intentionally designed, others arbitrary or accidental.
Connections are formed in a part of my brain that is desperate to make sense of things that seem the same, but aren’t. I began to make my own patterns in coffee rings, building up from one imprint to the seven required to create the full ‘enclosed’ wheel, eventually producing new physical works as coffee-stain ‘etchings’ on a broken chunk of porous Carrera marble.
Sarah has edited over 70 of my individual images into rapidly-shuffled pairings, which I've titled Endless, and can be seen at the link here, accompanied by an original composition by Caterina Gobbi.
Sixfifteen (6.15) is a web publication orchestrated by Sarah Howe, featuring work and collaborations from 12 other artists and writers. Made from conversations (some visual, some verbal) stretching over the last year, the works together assemble a sense of polyrhythmic time:
In late summer, as the sun starts to set, it hits the tower block across the street from mine.
At 6.15 the reflected light, hollowed by its mediation, sketches out the morning’s shadows on my living room wall.
Here, two times converge.
A trick of the light?
The images seen here are screenshots from the online publication, and as such are of limuited resolution. The project is best viewed at the link here, seated, with headphones and cannot be accessed on phones.
Contributors:
Asmaa Jama - @asmaa_floats
Caterina Gobbi - @sixzeroeighteightone
Charles Turner - @charlesturnerjournal
Emma Dolan - @e.dolan_
Ibrahim Azab - @ibby_azab
Max Armstrong - @a.max_
Natalie Tan - @nahtalietan
Nia Fekri - @nia.fekri
Ramona Güntert - @ramona_guntert
Sabeen Chaudhry – @sabeen.chaudhry
Tom Railton - @tom_railton
Victoria Doyle - @victoriadoyle