GALLERY 1
WAITING UNTIL THE LAST MINUTE (2018-5000000000)
SIMON MACEWAN
A mechanism turns slowly, intermittently lifting hammers which strike thick metal discs, making them ring. The sustained tones taper off into the quiet of the gallery space until they drop below the threshold of hearing, lost in the susurration of background noise. Yet even after they cannot be heard, they persist as auditory ghosts, a continuing memory of sound that feels as though it can still just be perceived.
Waiting until the last minute (2018-5000000000) looks to the distant future, a point lying as far in the future as the formation of Earth lies in the past. In 5 billion years, the dying sun will transform; expanding enormously, engulfing the closest planets in a sphere of fire. As the sun loses its mass and gravitational hold, the Earth will drift away, but not fast enough to escape the wall of flame. Everything will be destroyed; the ultimate end of the Earth.
Echoing the very first clocks, which had no face but sounded bells to mark the hours, this exhibition is an exercise in hubris and futility, a clock to count the time until the end of the world, it reaches to an end it cannot possibly meet. The tones lingering past the threshold of perception, parallel the way that the vast distance and time of the end of the world exceeds our ability to imagine. Waiting until the last minute (2018-5000000000) is a device to contemplate the limits of our understanding; a metaphor that is felt in the body.
Abbotsford Convent Open Spaces – c3 Artists talks
Date: Saturday 17th November 2018
Time: 4pm-4:30pm
