Documentation by Tomas Sinkevičius.

SILVER TEA

2016

an installation consisting of the works

Sea Change, audio, carpet, sound shower speaker. Made in collaboration with Kjell Fredrik Eriksson. 

Abulon (Avalon), hand-knitted fishing line, aluminium tent poles

Cloud Skylight Mural, 81 35mm slides, carousel projector, portable screen, projector stand

A six-metre long mass of hand-knitted fishing line lies draped over a suspended tent pole and hangs inches off the ground, swaying almost imperceptibly as bodies pass.

Meanwhile, a slide projector cycles endlessly through daily documentation of cloud patterns reflected on a strip of skylights, as the skies gradually darken.

A sound shower speaker plays a piece of music, on repeat: a collection of photographs of the sea that have been translated into sound. 

The three works that make up the installation Silver Tea can be seen as three meditations on the patterns and poetic rhythms found in everyday occurrences. Using small repeated gestures, I start to unravel what it means to observe, to labour and to translate in a world more transitory, manipulated and duplicitous than ever; where time is - and is of - the essence.

Silver Tea contemplates the importance of leisure and daydreaming in artmaking, the wandering of the mind when the body is engaged repetitive motions, and our interactions with surroundings usually taken for granted. This relationship between the tangible and intangible constantly shifts, where sound and light become sculptural objects, and time is reconstructed to the endless looping of music, looped stitches of fishing line, and the revolving carousel of the slide projector.

Sea Change, 2016, sound shower speaker, audio, carpet, stereo receiver.

Music by Kjell Fredrik Eriksson.

Later, thinking back on my early years in Sweden, I will remember that I spent a good part of my leisure and working time in solitude, painstakingly knitting metre after metre of fishing line.

To say it aloud sounds like a form a punishment. But nourishment is perhaps a better word. 
I read somewhere that dreams are calisthenics for your memory. Your mind performing star jumps, squats, lunges.

Working up a sweat while the body rests. 

Outside, triangular rows of skylights stretch like a graphic mountain range across the expanse of roof. Clouds drift across the panes of glass like film frames; a source of light capturing a reflected image, if only for an instant.

The phrase ‘casting off’ has always contained a sense of anticipation; a transition from a fixed state to fluid, or vice versa. From land to water or process to object, the act of casting off allows one to enter a new state: afloat, unbound. 

Silver Tea posters I-III

Edition of 60. Designed by Krister Bladh.

Silver Tea Posters I-III take three short texts which accompany and contextualize the works in Silver Tea. The texts themselves are staccato recollections and linkages, where the processes of hand-craft, observation and translation are re-manifested through language. The three nameless text pieces each shared a title with a work in the show, and functioned as posters for the exhibition itself.