Abstract:
Walter Benjamin refers to the ‘aura’ of an object as being dependent upon its location in both time and space, informed by its materiality and the process of creation, resulting in a unique identity for each object. This investigation is concerned with the role that this individual character and memory might play in the understanding of the object. The contradiction between interior and exterior in the hand-picked macrocarpa beams was a starting point for questioning if it is possible to disrupt the more conventionally held views of identity and understanding of objects through disruption of form and material. When parts of objects are absent, recollection of their original presence helps to understand and visually complete the objects. The physical filling in of these voids draws attention to the absence as opposed to the presence. Relocating casts of these negative spaces into other new objects brings the imprinted memory of the original with it, contributing to the new object’s identity. Rachel Whiteread’s positive casts of domestic spaces and objects uses this approach to highlight the memory of the original through the negative, inverted, copy. In considering these objects both individually and as a whole, similarities and differences between their form and materiality need to be remembered. Roni Horn’s paired series of works rely heavily on these memories in comparing them, where the differences rather than the similarities become the defining points contributing to the uniqueness of each object. Might this be the same here? Duplicating parts of objects in different materials and placing them in other objects, or substituting the material of an entire object with another material, questions the origin and identity of the whole object or parts of it. Each duplicated portion brings with it some trace of its original location that informs the ‘aura’ of the new object. Matter will hold the physical memory of its being and its materiality, referencing and indexing other things and objects.
