An object that you think might exist, but it has not been discovered yet.
Something that remains unfound.
Or, an object that you can hypothesise about: an object that is found but you don't know what it is, or why it is.
It's about the guessing game of archaeology, that is based around objects, materials, traces, gaps.
Shadows.
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| Tangle drawing, detail. Graphite on paper, 2015 |
Today I made a drawing that is a tangle of lines, but from the tangles some shapes emerge that look like bones and could be recognised by somebody who is familiar with them. Somebody who knows what to look for.
I remember a phrase that Dr Thomas used in a lecture a little while ago. The lecture was about horse breeding, and, if I remember correctly, he was talking about how horse bones may have been used for other things after the horse had died, perhaps ground up and used as fertiliser, and thus they were being "removed from the archaeological record." I was intrigued by the notion of "the archaeological record", the idea that there are items kicking around somewhere that are all part of this bigger framework, this complete record, a jigsaw of hypothetical objects that just need to be pieced together and it will all make sense...
Except the record is not a complete logical record, it is blurry and has gaps and parts removed or altered, and it shifts constantly and is redrawn. Tangled, disentangled, linking knots tied and then untied.
It will never be complete. It's an ongoing and impossible quest. And I like that.
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