I've been thinking about inserting carrots into this plastic washing basket since i got it about two years ago.It seems made for them. Though I hadn't counted on its flexibility nor their weight. Then there's the lack of symmetry in an average Pakistani carrot. These black carrots are amazing, they seem another whole species from their bland orange cousins. The bigger picture is a putting together of the product of industry and the produce of nature. Both are interventions of a sort, neither are "natural". This goes beyond my anthology of plastics.
Black and red carrots, 13 March 2010
Black Carrot juice, 26th March 2010, Lahore
Carrots in the clothes basket, 13th March 2010
Mixed carrots and plastic
Black carrots and orange plastic, 13th March 2010
The shoot
set-up with Nikon D3
Dyed eggs for Naurose,
Appo Jaffar, at Khaplu Palace, Baltistan 23rd March 2010
Khaplu village from above, 23rd March 2010
Khaplu high plateau in search of lawn-grass, 23rd March 2010
Panorama with Huna, Khaplu 23rd March 2010
Black Peppercorn Haier top-loader, detergent free twin tub, 14th March 2010
R.A. Bazaar Bombings, Friday 12th March 2010
Body parts, mobile phone advert, R.A. bazaar Bombings, Friday 12th March 2010
Washing down R.A. Bazaar, bombings, 12th March 2010
R.A. Bazaar bombings, 12th March 2010
Just outside Skardu by road, 23rd March 2010
Cabbage White's eating all my Ruccola, 26th March 2010
I have approached a potential collaborator for this venture and we are in the process of discussing it. The open storm drains in this massive city of 7+ million (1998 census figures) provide the only channeling of sewage from homes to its ultimate discharge in the now dead river Ravi. There are no treatments plants. However the ganda-nala’s also create ecological corridors through the city where plant and animal life is left fairly undisturbed. The current heightened tension in the city is making any walking venture deeply problematic, let alone undertaking a walk through a highly suspicious no-mans land. I hope to undertake an initialwalk (and documentation) within a few weeks.
The People’s Art Historical Garden Centre Project
Completed 25th October 2009 in collaboration with Adnan Madani. We have collaborated on several projects previously, notably “The Frankfurt School” video which is also covered in previous blog entries. See the newly added page of documentation and narrated video. Akbar Naqvi’s book “Image and Identity” (Oxford, 1997) is systematically dismantled and converted into useful paper bags. It is unbound and liberated from it’s burden of assumed authority. A reclamation, a reinterpretation and dissemination. Even an insemination (seeds are added to each art-historical bag). Like seeds themselves it is finally disseminated to the public of Lahore.
Eden project
I have yet to locate specialist input for this project and I now see it as being a much longer term initiative. I hope at least part of it may be realized by next summer’s residency.
Berlin Collaboration 2009-2010
I have sent out initial emails towards this collaboration. It is intended that a dual project be negotiated that comes to fusion and fruition in Berlin next summer. Something that involves horticultural practices in the cities of Lahore and Berlin.
Readings, recent and in progress, 1st Nov. 2009
Tim Richardson. Vista, The Culture and Politics of Gardens.
K. Helphand. Defiant Gardens.
Khan. The Gardener.
Ian Sinclair. Hackney that Rose-Red Empire.
Reza Aslan. How to Win a Cosmic War.
Charles Darwin. The Formation of Vegetable Mould.
Foucault. Several Readers and The Order of Things.
Isenberg. The Nature of Cities.
Belting. Garden of Earthly Delights.
Jellicoe. The Landscape of Man.
Coverley. Psychogeography.
Reynolds. On Guerrilla Gardening.
Allen. Kipling Sahib.
Solnit. As Eve Said to the Serpent.
Driver. Nash. Landing.
Research
I will be contacting Kenneth Helphand for my research on the ”Post-Colonial Garden”. This is currently under negotiation with my mentor concerning it’s whole approach to the subject.
An early sculpture from my foundation year at Epsom. 1974. I had spent the previous summer working on a motorway, the A3. We used to construct road markers out of waste materials to warn of hazards, to the trucks and other users of the as yet unopened road. I think something of my attitude to positioning work in the public space, and then the gallery space originated here.
"Two Bombs Kiss", Neem wood carving, 1990.
A prayer to avert nuclear war in the sub-c0ntitnet. It's based on a story I'd read of Brancusi, his ambition to place a version of "The Kiss" between the trenches of the Germans and the allies in the first world war.
"Heart Mahal" 1996,
Collaborative work. Iftikhar and Elizabeth Dadi, Durriya Kazi and David Alesworth.
"Fukuoka 2000" A residency undertaken with Durriya Kazi and Pakistani truck decorators. Intended to interface with Japanese truck decorators. (Image right.)
Collaborative works with Durriya Kazi, 1997-2000
"Chamak Patti disks" David Alesworth, 2001. Icons of modernity such as washing powder adverts, emblems of arab culture, early nuclear weapons and mushroom clouds. The "Chammak Patti" is glass impregnated tape (3M reflector tape) used to decorate trucks in Pakistan.
"Event Horizon" 2002.
six-foot satellite Dish, chamak patti, enamel paint, steel stand. An anti-globalization, ad-busting work. It's first incarnation was on a thela (hand-cart). David Alesworth, 2002.
"War Against Terror" 2002 Aluminum trays, nan roti's, toy American soldiers, chamak Patti tape.
"Teddy Bear Rug" 2002. Second hand soft toys on sale at Itwaar Bazaar, Karachi. A rug made of Teddy Bear skins.
The first of the "Teddy's Bear's". Toys for the war child. 2003.
"Probes" 2003, Karachi, out in the city of Karachi.
"Probes" in Karachi, the phalwala, murgheewala and doodhwala. 2003.
"Trays" 2003.
International brands, hacked, based upon fake items found in Karachi's markets. Stensil cut aluminium.
"Record Room"
Series, 2008-2009. Monochrome photographs. These will be shown in combination with "Fermi's Pile". The photographs will also be framed in grey, passivated zinc-plated steel. I will probably use a phosphate passivation on all the metal items.
"Record Room"series monochrome.
Probably around 20 x 30 inch, full-bleed images, in grey metal frames. 2008-2009.
"12.2.42"
Part-progress to Fermi's Pile, to be shown with the monochrome, "Record Room" images. This will be constructed from 180 units, around 30 are present here. I'm now looking at a dark grey phosphate finish, same on the photographic frames. The work will probably be titled "12.2.42" the American date for when this first went critical and so beginning the atomic era.
Chicago Pile-1, a massive "atomic pile" of graphite bricks and uranium fuel, which went critical on December 2, 1942, built in a hard racquets court under Stagg Field, the football stadium at the University of Chicago. Due to a mistranslation, Soviet reports on Enrico Fermi claimed that his work was performed in a converted "pumpkin field" instead of a "squash court".
The NCA gallery space where the works will be shown, Jan. 2009.
NCA Gallery, Jan. 2009. This is probably the space I will be using. There are three potential rooms.
"Botanical Garden" or perhaps, "Role Call" or "All the Names", "Looking for Eden"? 2008-2009 currrent work.
I may also show a few of the botanical label works, these are in progress. They began in Linz, in the summer of 2008, at the Transart residency. I'm thinking of God telling man all the names (to settle the argument with the angels). I'm thinking of Eden and a taxonomy for Eden. I'm gradually working my way towards that, reseraching Quaranic and Biblical texts and refernces.
