“Love is the answer,” the wall insists,
like a palimpsest of exhausted certainties —
a phrase so over-circulated it has become
almost apotropaic in its repetition.
And yet, standing here, I think of the writers
who arrived at the same conclusion
only after circling the perimeter of despair —
after anatomising cruelty, entropy,
and the quiet attrition of human relationships.
There is a difference between the sentimental
and the salvific.
Between the facile injunction to “be kind”
and the unadorned recognition
that tenderness is the last remaining instrument
against annihilation.
Sometimes a cliché endures
because it is all that survives
after the rest of the language
has collapsed.
Even William Burroughs saw it,
eventually.
In one of his final journal entries, he writes:
“Love? What is it?
Most natural painkiller what there is.
LOVE.”
Wall text from the exhibition: UNWOUND, Paloma Concierta 2017.
Spanish slate skirts the interior of Sauerbier House, [1*]
(that was once the roof of the Port Noarlunga Life Saving Club);
The blackboards and their linear condensing of geography
into dark portraits of chance and voyage;
The external lines of the reflective copper strips
that prefer the Western aspect;
The ‘Unwound’ soundscape that uses the house itself
as an instrument to create a zone of contemplation;
The wool-wound old teak bowls that conceal and reveal
simultaneously, of Tree, of Sheep, of Hand
and the organic mathematics of human error
that is also present in nearby pastures and conversations;
The German piano on the verge faces a choir of She-oaks,
back to the house, no longer permitted to sing amongst natives
- he still-calls in delimited shapes from the levy wall
to the fruiting harp of the ‘Woman’s River’,
the Nganki Paringa River, The Onkaparinga River,
in Kaurna Yerta:
All these things are part of what I call
The Palette of my Location.
Sauerbier House. PC 12.9.17
The palette of my particular location.
On this day, 2 years ago....
I welcomed the first day of spring
in a similar frame of mind.
How seasonal the mind is.
It responds to location
not only with the material
we touch and make Matter;
but also with the focus and colour
of our thoughts.
This morning I saw the distant ranges,
across a field of what would be oats
And they were slightly lighter in green,
with a multiplied shimmer
of sour dropped heads
Rejected by the graze.
Some small things
are just burning,
to grow
While others long for the bulb of sleep
that helps leaves long enough
to fall, without a loss
Art breathes in and out its own cycle
of intakes and externalisations.
The trauma and longing
of love and questions:
This anthem of breath wrestled thoughts
Is set to grieve and pulse against that matter,
And, as much as time is known,
to be relative to place,
Art, is in relation to this matter,
held in hand, a moment
now defined by this palette
of my own particular location.
I guess that's why
I cannot be
just a painter,
anymore.
Paloma Concierta
First Day of Spring
September 1st 2017
Bowl Burning Eve
Sauerbier House
———————————
1*
This Spanish slate which was previously on the roof of the Port Noarlunga Lifesaving
Club and was salvaged by local Welshman Ken Davies and gifted it to Lisa Harms (whilst she was the first Artist/Writer in Residence Sauerbier House 2015-2016). She then passed some of this slate to Concierta along with this information. Ken Davies is a recent recipient of a State Heritage award for his master-craftsman skills which were presented at Sauerbier House August 2016. Harms connects the Welsh heritage of Emily Gwendoline Sauerbier (nee Davies) with the place for which Sauerbier house was named Llanfairfechan (a seaside village not so far from Bangor slate quarry in Wales).
Llanfairfechan was the previous name of Sauerbier House.
Image credit:
Antarctica (ii2016 7.LF), from the Landform series, 2016, Paloma Concierta.
Found Mid Century teak bowl, acrylic and wool, 300 x 300mm. Photography by Rick Martin
