Hermes' lack of words

Description

Tent. Auckland, Artspace, 26-07-2013, 31-08-2013. - Can we ever be present in the past? Perhaps in moments: a scene glimpsed, a sound heard, a history felt, a story grasped. Yet we are always, invariably, brought back to the present, like an incessant nag at our shirt. The title of this exhibition imagines a short diversion from a story. Hermes, the figure who carried messages and stories between the world of the gods and the world of the mortals, and was protector of thieves, travelers, herdsmen, orators, wit, literature and poets, traveled the border between material and imagination. But in the diversion Hermes is, for once, tongue-tied. Unable to describe something of the world from which he had come, his role is momentarily suspended. Within this diversion, the works of this exhibition form a study of memory's inscription into matter, and of matter's command over memory. Together they provide an exploration of diversions from the main picture, and of the ways in which the 'stuff' of material intervenes in memory and imagination at the same time as it binds them together