Allotment
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A body of works formed out of the extended engagement of the HICA (Highland Institute for Contemporary Art) project, Allotment examines a particular comparison between the activities of the HICA gallery and the vegetable plot kept adjacent to the gallery. In this comparison HICA reflected on the ‘concrete’ results of interactions and involvements; the reaping of what is sown, in the formation of a garden or exhibition; the correspondence between personalities and the attitudes and values articulated.
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Dots and Boxes
In this ongoing series of works the game Dots and Boxes is played with a particular group of artists and other contributors, who share concerns in the general area of the Concrete. These are then made into animations including each move in the game and a painting, in oil on paper, of the final composition. For more on this series, click here |
Allotment: Dots and Boxes series, 2018
Oil paint on paper, 34.1 x 31cm Accompanying gif animation, 2.32 mins (shown below) |
Expressed through spatial relationships and differing organisational principles, Allotment is an arena for considering the processes we live through as perhaps, at all scales, entirely ‘concrete’, if complex and indeterminate. Allotment works extend this concern through examining processes of positioning, manifested in both the works themselves and in their exhibiting; their spatial arrangement an integral aspect of their making, presentation and understanding.
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Detail of the Allotment installation at AIS, Japan, 2017
Photo courtesy of Atsuo Hukuda / AIS |
Proposal for an Allotment installation, 2018
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Two geometric forms have predominated in these cell-like works: 5 x 1 rectangles, reflecting the dimensions of the vegetable garden (the same as a UK standard half-size allotment, measuring 5 rods, roughly 25x5m); and 4 x 4 grids deriving from the 4-year rotation of crops employed on the HICA plot.
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Allotment: Crop Rotation series, III, 2017
Oil on paper, 34.1 x 31cm For more on the Crop Rotation series, click here |
These simple forms are employed as the products of concretizing processes; the results of dialogues between human measurement and natural form, individual activity and material.
The 5x1 proportion also approximates, visually, to a capitalized letter ‘I’ (i.e. in Arial, bold), a coincidence of form which enables reflections on these processes in the light of our subject/object relations. This formal coincidence further presents self-similar states, for example, between a wooden block and the individual cells that constitute it, suggesting analogies to our own composite selves, or our own part, as individuals, in the continual concretizing processes forming our wider, physical and cultural environments. |
Allotment: Sudoku studies series
5 x 5 sudoku as 5 x 1 composition I, 2018 Oil on board, single panel, 60 x 300cm For more on the Sudoku studies series, click here |
Indicative of potential engagements with an actual space (for example, an imaginable vegetable plot), these works explore inherent meaning in formal qualities. They consider how the information in shape and position is encountered and integrated, and whether this level of information may constitute a form of panpsychism.
Exhibiting these works provides a further encountering and negotiation of this level of meaning; a further point of reflection on how these meanings may form part of general concretizing processes. |
© 2024 Geoff and Eilidh Lucas [email protected]