Installation of Stone Curtains (between heaven & earth) 2024 Sydney group exhibition at Redbase Art Space Chippendale, Sydney
Stone Curtains (between heaven and earth) presents two suspended curtains composed of watercolour works on paper. They serve as a metaphorical gateway into exploring the intersections of science, spirituality, and art. Stones as metaphor, represent vessels of knowledge, embodying both macro and micro qualities, evoking the vastness of the universe while also containing the weight of time and history. Eather employs randomness in these arrangements to suggest universal dualities and the tumbling laws of chance and natural phenomena ...These dualities extend beyond the physical realm, reflecting earthly substance and heavenly bodies, and exploring the tensions between...
Nicholas Tsoutas Curator
The first job of the scientist is to not trust the science…
Ideas for this installation began whilst creating watercolour studies (Belgrade sky 2023 series), consisting of assorted floating, ‘celestial’ coloured rocks and stones, symbolic of ‘allegorical’ relationships. The concept was expanded via a suite of Terra-Australis ochre-coloured rocks and stones derived from the Currency series 2016; this provided something of an Antipodean union. This pairing enabled broader concepts to be unveiled – such as the coincidence of opposites – and philosophical investigations into what Goethe, Wittgenstein and other philosophers have explored with the “transcendence of dualism.”
Stone Curtain (heaven) Stone Curtain (earth) 2024 comprises two gridded sets of sixty-four watercolours on (A4 300gsm arches paper), linked together with (archival) tape. Centred in the gallery space, these ceiling to floor curtains hover back-to-back. In suspended animation the composition unveils the tumbling laws of chance. The number 64 also references the number system of the I Ching: Book of Changes. Symbolic interplay of Change and Chance. Viewers are encouraged to circumnavigate the work that moves gently with any breeze.
Thematically this installation fits into a larger framework of my painting and sculptural concepts whereby rocks and stones (in both their micro and macro forms) are proposed as ‘mental vessels for the containment of things’ such as matter, knowledge, and the universe. ‘Floating’ rocks and stones further reveal something about magnetic forces and the laws of attraction.
Michael Eather 2024
