Droopy time

24.7 - 17.8 2024

RM gallery and project space, Auckland, NZ

Documentation by Ardit Hoxha.

‘The tides never wash the sand or make it firm. When I tried to make a sandcastle, the sand would just run away through my fingers. It was too dry to hold together. And even if I poured sea water over it, the sun would dry it up at once.’

  • Iris Murdoch, The Sandcastle

Droopy time brings together recent sculptures that explore forms of time and distance, and acts of leaving and returning.  

The sculptures are made from a curious assortment of materials: flamboyant vintage ties filled with rice, tissue paper forms found inside new shoes, volcanic sand small rodents bathe in, guitar strings played by a partner, discarded piano keys and architectural drawing tubes. 

Accompanying Droopy time is a text by Ash Kilmartin. In 2008, Florence and Ash presented Modern Love, a duo show at Rm 103.  

With support from the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.

On the way over

Departing,

never quite arriving home

a stop on the way over

before heading to un-here again.

Imagine!

Hourglasses don’t run out

no matter how you flip them

in a place with beaches but no tide.

She told me,

some missing actions come close:

it’s like battering a fish

but the sand is made of a mountain.

Readymade:

dredge the inside of a shoe

it’s childhood-knowledge, this,

how to keep certain shapes for good.

Droopy time

is unexpected pockets.

You keep the best bits, always,

But they just can’t be translated.

She told me,

the orange one is a fave.

Empty them, to travel light.

It means ‘the times,’ as in, ‘sign of’.

Telescopes

on two sides of the same eye

see how to dress up for your

equatorial balancing act.

She told me,

the real moment of leaving

only becomes fixed later.

Remember to bring back a postcard.


  • Ash Kilmartin