A simple act. Breathing is often considered a simple act, because for most it takes no thought. The simple act of creating a partial vacuum inside the body, drawing in gases, enabling molecules to pass through membranes, expelling gases; the mechanisms of our very survival. Few acts, it seems, are simple, devoid of implication, associated meaning, inner workings.
I have bought some land. A complicated act. That is, when it is paid for, I will have a share in the land on which the house I live in stands. And how far down does my land go? Someone will know the strict legalities of the matter, but I choose to imagine my property reaches to the fiery core. I am the landlord of an inverted pyramid, my share of the sphere, its molten apex targeted on Australasia.
Land ownership is a process of succession, a cascading performance spanning generations. The succession begins with the staking of a claim and progresses when minds and plans change, or the simple act of breathing falters. Individual ownership seems complicated, but it is truly a simple act of self-deception. We cling to the spinning sphere, pretending it is ours; we walk its surface, scratch its crust, ponder its frightening origins. We measure the sphere with our bodies, and we measure the term of our bodily existence, of our ownership, by the movement of the sphere.
Before Nick Rands went to live in Brazil I wrote of the mud balls he had made that each was “an autographic mark of sorts, a unique object, a hand print in the round, but smoothed off by those hands to look as regular and as much like its fellows as possible.”
That text continues: “In the works of recent years, the same hands have smeared mud to map the movements of the artist’s windmilling arms on a surface. The areas thus described are then filled in by the repetitive accretion of lines made with parallel, echoing movements of a brush. These works, on canvas, on paper, or on the wall, take the simplest materials in their rawest form and harness the body’s natural geometry to create images which refer to nothing more than bodily rhythms and the daily round. They are as light in their effect as they are pure in their means, thanks to the spaces in between the lines, whose dimensions are determined by theuncontrived measurement of the eye, hand and fingers as they do their work. The mud balls represent an even simpler use of raw materials, mud as mud, and their form is a similarly straightforward expression of the hands that make them. In their spacing for the installation the same natural measurement is at work, resulting again in a lightness in the background grid which records the rhythm of production and deployment.”
It was clear to me that in Earthly Spheres, the artist had succeeded better than most in his quest for a simple act. “Most actions,” I wrote, “find their rhythm between the revolutions of the globe and the pumping of the human heart. We have a fundamental, devotional need to answer the call of such resonances: we make things; we exchange things; we collect things; we record things; we lift our voices in song. On a production line, in a workshop or office, work answers the call to rhythm, perhaps more than play.”
Now the artist is far away and the issues seem more complicated. The simple act has been carried out here and there, and the locations for it are linked by the fact as surely as those which were the sources of the materials used. The earth is scooped up, possessed, a claim staked. The number of spheres grows, and the slow evaporation of moisture from the mud becomes somehow analogous to the cooling of the core beneath the mantle. This sphere is comfortingly small, one amongst many. While my friend has bought land out there, settled on it, his conical territory still meets mine at the centre, and above we tread the same crust.
© John Gillett 1999
Chart, Angel Row Gallery, 1999 ISBN 0 905634 38 1
EARTHLY SPHERES / ESFERAS TERRESTRES
EARTHLY SPHERES, 4000 spheres of earth, 1998-2020, installation at caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
ESFERAS TERRESTRES
Three thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Torreão, Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1999; Centro Cultural de Criciuma, Brazil, 2001, Espaço Cultural Sergio Porto, Rio de Janiero, Brazil, 2001
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
EARTHLY SPHERES. Four thousand hand-formed spheres of earth, 1999. Shown at: Warehouse Artists’ Studios, Norwich, UK, 1998; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, UK, 1999; The Winchester Gallery, Winchester, UK, 2001; Caveaux de l’abbaye, Caunes Minervois, 2020
SIERRA CABRERA
11 earths from Sierra Cabrera region, Almeria, Spain.
1996 edition of 3
