Shimmer cabinet
2024
Unknown as to whether instrument or reference, the cabinet is thought to measure ‘shimmer’. Shimmer is a concept articulated by Deborah Bird Rose in her essay, ‘Shimmer: When All you Love is Being Trashed’. Rose describes the waves of invisible forces that surround and enable life, ‘the flow of ancestral power in a collaborative, multi-species matrix’. It reminds us that every ‘thing’ exists only through and in relation. There are no edges without the spaces in between. The fine golden lines on the cabinet doors appear to shimmer when they slide over each other. This visual effect is known as ‘moire’, derived from the French ‘watered silk’ is used in other applications to measure and represent fluid flow and potential fields. Hence the cabinet may have been used to measure the ‘shimmer’ of objects placed within it.
Edition of 3 + AP
Brass, glass, gold, acrylic
1000 x 900 x 300mm
Made with Sean Booth and Megalo Print Studio during ‘designer in residence’ at Canberra Glassworks 2024
From MYTHICA IGNOTA Artefacts of the Oscillocene and Warawana Mythologies
Designing Mythology is a questioning and proposal for old ways / new to exist as humans, using the process of 'mything' to reorientate back towards the planet, and recalibrate our value systems by dismantling the current shadow metaphors of the Western-colonial worldview. It proposes the restorying of scientific perspectives to offer a cosmology that includes humans as part of the living world whilst simultaneously removing us from the centre. Thus a recognition and return, via a circuitous route, to the worldviews, deep connection and sustainment of the first peoples of our planet.
Photographer Pew Pew Studio and Brenton McGeachie courtesy of Canberra Glassworks
Acquisition inquiries via Sophie Gannon Gallery
