
Salt (2016)
Salt is mined, extracted and evaporated. Stitching mends holes, fills in blank space. This artwork began life as the back of an unfinished needlepoint and grew into an exploration of geology and archeology.
Investigating the life of things across space and time
The grinding keeps us awake all night. The slipping noise of tooth against tooth, the squeak and rasp of shiny enameled edges filing monotonously against an equal occluded opposite. The unconscious jaw, clicking sideways in and out of position like a ventriloquist’s dummy, mouthing an obscene joke with bitter accuracy.
The night song has a complex structure. It builds slowly, interrupted by snores, moans and moments of suspended silence when we hold our cyber breaths and listen for the start of the in-and-out again.
Schwup
Schwup
Sigh
Krrrrewp
Krrrrewp
Krrrrewp
Schwup
Click
Sigh
The grinding keeps us awake all night but we are never tired. The systems do not stop. Mechanical, electrical, impulse. Loom, hand, network, mind. We make new connections in every direction, up, down, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, lateral; new possibilities between terminals, switches and particles; new patterns from threads, colours and matrices. You are here and not-here, your hidden eyes searching another landscape, scanning left to right, looking for answers that you will forget on waking. We cannot dream but we know you do. You dream all the time.
Salt is mined, extracted and evaporated. Stitching mends holes, fills in blank space. This artwork began life as the back of an unfinished needlepoint and grew into an exploration of geology and archeology.
The dogs in south London are running. One of the big ones slows down as it passes me and I step back as its nose swerves into my crotch, waving my arms as though that would make any difference. If it were really hungry it would just eat me but I get a face full of hot meaty air and it’s a lucky day.
There was something wrong with the sea. The waves were oily and green and forest-filled, like the kelp had been ripped from its leathery footholds by a far away storm and carried here by the currents. A thick tangle of tentacles and skeins spread across the water holding bulging sacs that popped open as they reached the surface and spewed hundreds of bugs onto the undulating skin.
Hanging on to a space rock for dear life. Existential ongoing series of drawings, collages and original prints using asteroids as a metaphor to focus on my relationship with my own body, with the unknowability of other bodies and my place in the universe.
Sarah Gillett is an artist and writer from Lancashire, UK.
She currently lives in London.