A I R
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Coming up
for
Clearing
the
Taking
some
Off the
Up in the
Into thin
Air is the
space between things. It is the v
a
s
t,
op en,
e
m
pty.
Located
between the visible and the tangible. Filling the space between the earth and
the sky, carrying invisible, coded signals. Everything and nothing. Around us
and of us.
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Air can be
thick and salty and hot and fresh and clear and heavy. Warm, vapour-visible,
polluted, insistent or still. Oppressive, soupy, crisp, breezy, quick. Hot and
getting hotter. We trust it is there, suspending disbelief because we are told
from the beginning that it is. Air is psychological, it is mass consensus, it
is scientifically proven and we believe in it like religion. It is composed of
elements and compounds, it is healthy, it is life, but to a fish it is poison. We
recycle it as we inhale and exhale; parts attach themselves within us and what
we expel is less than the intake. Suffocating, isn’t it?
Air is a
refusal of space. A quantifiable assemblage of particles. The density of water and
the anti-matter of a vacuum keep it at bay, otherwise this world is
wall-to-wall with air. There is no such thing as emptiness; the ‘empty’ is full
as air balloons to fill the available space. Everything that appears void is
full of this conglomerate of gases: nitrogen, oxygen, argon, carbon dioxide.
Minimalism is an illusion.
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Objects
cut through air, thrusting into the void, a parabola carved out from a wall and
into space. Air is held within, around an object. The object takes up space to
create awareness of it. Without obstacles there is no openness: a sense of
space is relative, only perceived in relation to a lack of it. Carefully,
shapes are formed from an aggregate of materials of varying density, tone and
adhesion, hardening to shape and reflect the air. To contain it, exclude it,
place boundaries on it, reconfigure it. And yet air is in them still, these
shapes that shape the air. Air moves through invisible gaps and weaknesses, an
externalisation of internal processes as our bellows pump in and out in
unceasing rhythm.
-Rebecca Gallo
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