Introductory statement to my Interim MA Show. (Work has been submitted but physical exhibition postponed due to COVID-19).
I remain hopeful that this exhibition will be shown as it was intended to be seen (Nine A1 and A2 sized prints in the gallery at Westminster University’s Harrow site) as soon as lockdown finally ends.
Kevin Wood
From: ‘The Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge’.
Jorge Luis Borges imagined an encyclopaedia entitled: ‘The Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge’. In ‘the remote pages’, it was recorded that the animals are divided into 14 strange and obscure categories.
This fanciful taxonomy caught the attention of the philosopher Michel Foucault. In ‘The Order of Things’ he wrote of the way in which humankind attempts to classify and organise knowledge and how this endows those who do so with power. It also leaves gaps in which new ways of interpretation opens up the pathway to new knowledge.
The titles of the categories created by Borges offered a spur to the imagination and an inspiration for the work exhibited here.
Four of Borges titles have been interpreted for viewing and are shown in four sets here.
Belonging to the emperor (2019)
As far back as the 6th Century Giant Pandas have been used as diplomatic currency by the Chinese. The photos show: The Macclesfield Panda and the hunter who killed it.
(The image of Captain H.C. Brocklehurst is shown by kind permission of the owner of the original painting: Mr Johnny van Haeften).
That from a long way off look like flies (2020)
The triptych showing Red Kites feeding in mid-Wales represents a successful re-establishment of these magnificent birds in the UK. Until the 1990s they were extinct in England and Scotland and down to only 30 pairs in Wales. Groups of over 200 often gather at a feeding station near Aberystwyth and the RSPB estimate that there are at least 1800 breeding pairs across the British Isles. The title is playful as there could so easily have been none left at all.
(This triptych was produced with the kind support of University of Westminster 125 Fund).
Sirens (2020)
The Mermaid is said to protect the Nore Sandbank just off the port of Sheerness in Kent. The SS Richard Montgomery, Britain’s most dangerous wreck, with a vast cargo of high explosives, lies just below the surface, masts visible in all tides. Huge ships pass close by- perhaps too close for comfort? We would do well not to vex the benevolent Mermaid.
Innumerable (2020)
Honeybees are vital to the balance of nature and it has been said that: ‘If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, mankind would only have four years of existence left’. They look innumerable but they are both finite and precious.
