Recasting the relationship between the body and painting, Mantle/mantel explored how material elements such as garment, sculpture, wall and lighting are implicated in the realisation of an artwork. Geometric shapes in the wall painting were reiterated in the surfaces of the garment and the shadows cast by the shelf, coalescing as a total composition. The resulting assemblage of surfaces elaborated Eckersley’s ongoing interest in the human subject implied in encounters with art.
ANTONIA PONT
milk river
(after Agnes Martin)
I
can barely stay on it
nor look at it (I see
I've now become
frightened of you)
areas of dark white move
like fish beneath
like bruises—rounded, spoken:
submerged garden
pressing to flower after having
flowered.
border is barely different
but the difference holds
liquid from teeming
(to know I’m afraid
breaks me off in small pieces)
aftern oon. & relief’s
weather.
still house, since. and disks
of milksun cast across cat’s body
which seems a single
darkest bruise—
sunk through with light.
this work.
luckily my eyes see less
and less well, else
its grain would assail me:
photo image in a book
whose spine is not yet
broken (can one come back
from fear? its stream
must drizzle at a pace
integratable in a life—
yes questions of chemistry)
milk.
mayonnaise.
(the way I was so wet, so freshly
painted, with you
—our even pond)
border adjacent to the
pale, central piece. Held Area.
and I see
fingertips not taking
/ approaching: a just approach
to draw sobs.
—sobs from sheer patience
safer,
skin’s wait turned auditory
(today, earlier I read
high philosophy (kind, hard) then careened
below and parallel
to
concrete monument offsetting
sky. to music. flying in thought
through an air we might have named
there’s more and more
I will not have wired to you.)
beats along imperceptible lines,
fine species of metal ear
(my timid, listening eyes
and my person
having named fear
do not f— this painting
but might avoid it:)
pale,
held.
held to hold open. its formation,
apparently without noise, inscrutable:
art of ab. stain. ing.
from anticipation
( w/r/t futures’ width metre
saturation tone)
and now: [a list of all the words that sound
the sounds of colourless liquid]