Things you didn't know you were already enjoying
John Ward Knox & Fiona Gillmore >

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Just before, during and after
Writing in three parts
By Fiona Connor



Wednesday, 30th of July 2008
Part One / preface

It has been raining for 33 days there are puddles everywhere the whole city has been dealt the same hand. Tony just walked in through the sliding doors. He told me yesterday that it had been raining for 32 days.

This is the first time I have seen Window like a giant monitor- a glass screen backed with a picture making chamber, a circulating fan and air vents up the top.

The other day Gilmore was talking about background music and the way it can become just that, background music but sometimes not. Sometimes you follow it more closely and it becomes a vital soundtrack singing in your head.

I looked around the bus yesterday and everyone was having a bad hair day.

In this monitor there are what the TV industry calls bars. Gilmore has painted broad vertical blue stripes. These will command a striking new frame.

A willingness to work together is a beautiful thing a willingness to listen is too.

The library has its own blue stripes. They run across the windows and sliding doors leading people through the space and not the glass. There are 12 steps that people walk up as they look left at Gilmore’s 22 new stripes and past these, amongst millions of books, are blue stripes lining the library shelves.

At the moment on the floor are drop sheets and gear. John is going to install a little magic in the machine using ubiquitous materials lightly. He is talking about paper pasted to the glass with the force of a fan, a second move in this collaboration.

I have been thinking a lot about figure and ground. At the magazine stand the other day Cudby on his break from Pizza Pizza noticed that the world is always presented as either completely flat or completely fractal. Like everything is either background or everything is foreground.

There are now three other people on this black vinyl bench and Tony just walked out with a book under his wing.

Monday, 11th of August 2008
Part Two / …

I am not sure what the calendar says but I can feel spring.

Someone has moved the bench so it faces Window 5 metres back and parallel with the stairs.

Now that all the detritus of making has been removed Window seems less like a monitor and more like a pond.

The work has been completed. Gilmore’s stripes reflect and maintain an authority transcending into the thoroughfare latching onto its pre-existing bars and stripes.

I have just checked out a Daniel Buren book and it lies open beside me. He is fabulous. People are still walking in and out through the sliding doors with books.

I love John’s work I see his balanced chain like the corner of a turning page. By describing just this corner he has involved the entire floor that I am standing on. The drawn edge is cropped by Window’s glass screen. It is comprised of a 3 meter length of jewellery chain resting on the tip of a thin rod bent in tension.

This collaboration does not deny the fact that this is a thoroughfare. These two gestures are respectively strong and light, associatively dry and whimsical. People continue to walk in and out of the space. 3 have come and gone from the bench. I am not sure what the calendar says but I can feel spring.

Wednesday, 3rd of September 2008
Part Three / remaining flyers