Sorry to join late into this thread.
And this maybe of interest to Mairead's original questions. Artist Jonathan
Callan's work has had a big influnece on me. His piece 'Meetings' 2001 took
the Minutes of a Masonic meeting as subject. Rather than erase or
obliterate, he applied a dentist's drill to the text to make a stencil of
it. As exhibit, he placed the original on the wall, then the stencil of the
text over it, suspended two inches from the original by pins. In other
words, though the stencil contains the 'words,' one cannot see them; but
through the stencil the onlooker tries to see the original text. He plays on
'denial' - the coded original text, the belief that these minutes are true,
our want to testify to them, the ridiculousness of the meeting, our belief
in authenticity, etc.
Callan's 'Rational Snow' 2002 is the ultimate obliteration. It comprises of
an open book, just lying there, but with a breeze block of concrete laying
over it - not denying the book's openness but just laying over it to deny
the text - to deny our reading of it, our happy relationship to the book.
Callan also drills text (like drilling teeth) in order to inject silicone
through the stencil he has made, creating letters on stalks, poems floating
free above the page.
Not quite erasure or obliteration, my favourite Callan work is 'Ireland in
Switzerland,' 2001. He took a green hard back book, a glowing history of
Switzerland, and with a tiny power chisel sculpted down and through the
cover to create a sawdust map of Ireland standing out from the cover.
Though suddenly vogue, Jonathan Callan's work not only tests visual artists
to the hilt, he begs questions of writers and poets. Callan doesn't
acknowledge the dispute between art forms: his obsessive erasures,
obliterations, compulsions - with books, dust and building materials -
re-engages with Modernism, uniting the tiny with the monumental.
Rupert
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