A Portuguese Connection

Cilda Meireles is a Brazilian artist showing at Tate Modern until January 11th 2009. It is a retrospective of his career and there are eight large scale installations...his work is described as "powerful and compelling", "elegant", "possessing clarity and mystery, science and poetry".

It's all that and political too. And breathtakingly beautiful.
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/cildomeireles/about.shtm

I mention him on this blog because of one of the pieces "Through" (or "Atraves") which can be seen on this page (click on the picture to see more of the piece)...
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/cildomeireles/events.shtm
As you walk through the installation in a maze of see-through walls made of different materials (such as plastic shower curtains, wire fencing, glass fishtanks - with see-through fish!) you step on panes of glass laid over already broken glass. You can feel the glass shattering at its weakest points under your feet, making a delicious crunching sound. It's a powerful feeling, being allowed to do this in a "don't touch" sort of place. It's especially liberating if you've just seen the Rothko treasures on the same floor (although in a completely different way he was also dealing with boundaries). The staff periodically go round with a brush and sweep up tiny shards that have fallen from visitor's shoes.

It is about being able to pass through prohibitions and barriers. Meireles says that by stepping on the glass (and breaking it) you are freeing yourself - "metaphorically breaking each piece of debris, each prohibition or obstacle"...

I was thinking about my recent rather small (and by no means comparable) attempt at an installation, China Blues. When I first began to make the piece, I was troubled by it being bound in the round shape. I had taken for granted the constructed and distorted view of the eastern hemisphere and I wanted it to bleed out. But since there were to be visitors and, especially, an Open Day with lots of children crashing around - and some people were already not seeing the piece and walking straight into it - it became apparent that I would need to mark the edges very strongly, not least because should anyone trip over it they might cut themselves quite badly. So I collected white chalk pebbles from the beach at Greenwich and laid them on the perimeter.

As that decision was in the making I was also thinking that drawing the countries in the gravel was too literal and that I should just fill in the whole circle with the pottery shards - and invite people to walk on the piece. What a fun interactive experience it would be! But then the piece was already advertised as "18th century pottery assembled in the shape of the Eastern hemisphere" and it also had to last 4 weeks for the duration of the festival...

So, the possibilities were there for a completely different piece. I thought perhaps I would remove some of the gravel land masses as the weeks wore on - symbolic of the rising seas - but which country first? And this would also mean finding more pottery to fill in the encroaching sea areas and that would be lots more work...

I also regretted that South America was absent from my "world in pieces", not that this continent was part of the history I was describing, but for the Portuguese connection - as the first Europeans to find and trade with the East. Oh well, never mind.

I also thought about having a final event in which I could invite people to come and walk on the piece, but there was another idea on the cards which was, far from destroying it, to keep it in place at Creekside Centre. Even as the piece was being made, plantlife was starting to grow through the gravel. Nick Bertrand and myself both liked the idea of seeing what else might sprout through given time...a sort of greening of the land...