"No Reflections"
this week I've been finding it difficult to think about the work,
last week was easier, the wondering was still part of the job.
Martin Boyce's work requires time, a sense of abandonment heightened by the weird acoustics of the location, Venice's echo soundscape tricks you into thinking the voices you hear are actually there, in the room. But they are distant, below. Venetians walking to work, a gondolier singing to his fabulously wealthy customers, a German tour group fifty tapping feet on the bridges nearby. Every weekday at noon the school children's voices drift up to the exhibition, ghost children playing in a forgotten playground. There is a crimson sculpture here that reminds me of a little ghost child from a 1970's horror film who I'd rather forget walking home through the whispering city at night.
The water is rising in Venice. Soon the acqua alta will drench the ground floors of the city's shops and houses and the tourists will be forced to teeter along wooden walkways strewn across Piazza San Marco, a labyrinth within a labyrinth. The mists roll in from the Adriatic, drenching everything in a heaviness.
A long time ago the acqua alta flooded the 4th floor of a 15th century palazzo. Stepping-stones were placed across the main hallway so people could walk across from one room to another. Birds came to drink and bathe in the shimmering pools, and trees grew, downwards from the ceilings, reaching towards the water. Now the water has gone the stones are left as if suspended. The trees are dead, petrified like the trees supporting the city below, poking into the lagoon. No brilliantly coloured birds rest and flutter, the pools have dried up, and the nesting box built for them lies empty. The level of the water is marked in rust on the metal objects left behind, like the carvings on the walls in Venice, a testament to disaster, change, a sinking city.
I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek signage to the UEA pavilion, I think it was really the main point of their show...
