ice work

Working in the creek last week was not all wallabies and wombats (and definitely not donkeys!) - I was really down there to set up this piece....

It's a large ice block containing a smaller encyclopeadia at the centre of the block (it was actually tricker than I first thought to freeze a book in a block of ice... but I was really determined to freeze a book in water gathered from my creek - even if I was unsure what the next stage of the work may be - so the book ice block has been sitting in my chest freezer for the past couple of months while I worked out what needed to happen next). I had an epiphany about what to do next as I was walking around the property: of course the creek water needed to be returned to the creek....

I set the piece up early in the morning on a rock in the middle of the sams creek and intended to take pics as the piece slowly melted, the ice melt joined sams creek (taking a little bit of the book knowledge with it perhaps?) and the book was released from the block of ice.

I had no idea what might happen as the ice melted (would the whole thing slide off the rock early in the melt? melt on one side more than the other? melt from the top down? bottom up? and how long would it take for the book to break free of the ice?)

Welllllll it took a LOT longer than I anticipated for the ice to melt - something I shouldn't have been surprised by really, given the size of the block and that it's late winter here at sams creek... the above pic was actually taken in the middle on the following day....

and then by early afternoon on day two....

... there was the book - resting easily on the rock.


All in all it was not what I thought was going to happen (not that I had a clear idea of what might happen...) - nor was the experience totally predictable.... whilst I waited and waited and watched and waited for my book to emerge drip by drip, I spent time closely exploring the immediate area. The creek had changed dramatically some months earlier after a series of dramatic floods so it was a great opportunity to relearn this creek that has been a constant feature for the length of my life. I listened to the small wrens and finches (and traffic thundering over the sams creek bridge some 300m away) not coincidentally I also read from Crispin Sartwell's 'The Art of Living' - his take on art as experience felt absolutely the right book to be reading whilst making a work that at its core is about interaction and experience...






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