Andrew Hazewinkel

In 2010 I was in the audience of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s keynote lecture that opened the 17th Biennale of Sydney, The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age. While speaking about his ‘life project’ Seascapes, he said something that remains with me as an enduring fascination. Respectfully paraphrasing Sugimoto from my memory, he described his motivation for launching his Seascapes series as a questioning of whether it is possible for a contemporary person to make an image that the ancients may have seen.

Three years later that thought played a principal role in my motivations for creating Material Collision (staring together at the stars) parts 1,2,3 2013 in which I too have tried to create an image that the ancients may have seen. While Sugimoto turned to the horizon at sea, I turn to the night sky.

Comprising image details of three late nineteenth century glass plate photographic negatives screen printed onto large sheets of carborundum sandpaper, this triptych sparkles gently like a night sky and it connects three periods of time in a vast expanse of historical time. The time during which the ancient roman sculptures were made, the time following their uneathing in which they were photographed, and the time in which I created this triptych. 

The starry qualities of the triptych are difficult to capture in documentation images of the work, it remains an experiential phenomenon. However the scratches and pittings that evidence the passage of time captured in the original glass negatives have been transfered through the process of their digitisation, to the files that were used in the screen printing process. These marks mingle with the visual effect created by the specific light refracting qualities of the silicon carbide particles which cover the surface of the paper. 

Sandpaper is a tool that plays a part in many traditional sculptural practices. In this work sandpaper maintains its association with sculptural production (through association with the image subjects), whilst becoming conceptually and physically a part of the artwork.  This shift from tool to image support  introduces a kind of material feedback-loop that combines with the mutual essentiality of silicon to both of the processually linked substrates. Proponents of Material Engagement Theory might identify this as a form of material semiosis. In accordance with the theory of material semiosis the ‘meaning’ of a material emerges from the conceptual blending of the physical and mental at our context specific engagement with it. Here the delicately dimensional dimensional surface of the carborundum sandpaper and scratched and pitted small panes of ninteenth century glass enter a circular materially semiotic exchange which futher extends, on a material register, the poetic dimension of the work.

In this triptych we see the shoulders, necks, and the back of the heads of three male figures of differing ages. Everything else is stripped away. We might consider the triptych as a set of reverse portraits, or as a group portrait, or as a tableau in which we become another figure joining the group that is already staring together at the stars. In each of the possible readings we experience a sense of the timeless intimacy of the human figure, especially in shared contexts, however as we settle into the performative aspects of tableau reading, we gaze beyond the figures in front of us, we gaze with them, and in doing so we gaze not at history, rather we gaze with history, at the stars, and that makes Material Collision (staring together at the stars) parts 1, 2, 3 both archaic and contemporary.



^{Material Collision (staring together at the stars) parts 1,2,3 was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria and presented in the 2013 iteration of the exhibition Melbourne Now.}