Distressed Aquisitions painting exhibition at 55 Sydenham Rd
(This exhibition is made from waste, it is its sole qualification, and it will return to waste, and not without waste. Technology has advanced to the extent that all human labour is waste. There are more artists than ever before. Generations aspiring to movements defined by scarcity with virgin pre-fab materials creating indirect landfill. What is called Contemporary, being so, in this first time in human history where nothing has any value.)
Another future, an alternative to the inevitable, this was what consisted of human consciousness. Where waste is only to waste, fraught eternities of obsolescence, of procedural applications of feelings derived from each hackneyed and patriarchal trope suggested by increasingly lazy media sources, no source material, equidistant knowledges between empirical and that of the Empire, the fathomable and unfathomable, tested against the means of millennia… means as much as anything… the only meaning behind the means… knowledge never to know, but to somehow make possible, or even probable.
Z.O’
Distressed Aquisitions
19/3-3/4/16
Zoe M. Robertson, “Leviathan of the Scorched Earth”, 2016. (Discarded paint/mistints) stone paint, limewash and acrylic on jersy cotton (discarded quilt cover). 200 x 400 cm. Photo courtesy 55 Sydenham rd.
Detail: “Leviathan of the Scorched Earth”.
Zoe M. Robertson, “Is This Still Life? #1: Sunday Painters’ Society”, 2015. Limewash, pastel, oil, maccheroni on canvas. 100 x 70 cm.
Detail: “Is this Still Life...”
Zoe M. Robertson, “Study for Ceremonial Upskirt”, 2015. (Discarded/mistint) lime wash and enamel on (discarded) canvas. 50 x 30 cm.
Zoe M. Robertson,”Study for the Firmament”, 2014. Pencil and ink on paper. Dimensions variable.
Zoe M. Robertson “Poster for Z. O’Mahoney: Minor Works (Mediaeval Banner Paintings)”, 2015. (Discarded) lime wash and enamel on (discarded) canvas. 170 x 80 cm (approx).
Zoe M. Robertson, “Cher Antonin”, 2009. Permanent marker and acrylic on pre-painted (discarded) canvas, LED light. 60 x 40 cm (approx).
Installation view: “Distressed Acquisitions”.
Installation view: “Distressed Acquisitions”.
Draft/Original text:
DISTRESSED acquisitions
Prefiguring the future of humanity in bodies:
Incorporated, Unincorporated
Loss: as love's great object.
:But they can't lose,
They who control. (Capital).
Disengendered...
Adopting the royal “we” as instructional:
We could find hope there
:living outside the law
(we might affirm it)
(a leviathan).
Only ever living
By what is not,
As much as might
Ever be (Intelligible).
Seeing as it is that which no longer is:
Collective memories
Falsified so that they might mean
Or simply have:
To have and not to be,
An ever-present failure
Against the probability of life (will out). (Out).