certainty photos on Flickr

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There are probably ten billion shots of the ceiling of the San Francisco Public Library from this vantage on the fifth floor.

“FLESH AND FINITUDE” Caitlin Dick (UK), Caitlyn Main (UK), Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE), Alicia Fidler (UK), Callum Johnstone (UK) by NEoN Digital Arts

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October 27, 2018 at 12:00pmuntil November 11, 2018 at 5:00pm at GENERATOR Projects

The exhibition, “Flesh and Finitude”, has borrowed its title from Cary Wolfe’s book, What is Posthumanism (2010). It explores the boundaries of human life and body. What is the end of the human and where does something else begin? This year’s NEoN festival’s theme is ‘Lifespans’ and our exhibition’s aim is to investigate the ‘posthuman condition’, the lifespan of ‘human’ as we know it.

Five artists were invited to provide different points of enquiry into what it means to be human in relation to other species, Nature, objects, technology, and humanity itself.

“Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that.” (Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman (2013) p.1) Today, when artificial intelligence, 3D printed organs and genetic engineering are a reality, what it means to be human is extended and redesigned. At the same time, technological advancement also reflects on our relationship (and most importantly similarities) with the Other.

Digital and sculptural works reflect on different aspects of human and its boundaries, its uncanny symbiotic relationship with others, held together by a melancholic sense of uncertainty.

Curated by Zsofia Jakab

Artists:

Caitlin Dick (UK) – Caitlin Dick recently graduated from her Master’s in Contemporary Art from Edinburgh College of Art and previously studied a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen. Caitlin’s most recent work The Problem Begins When…, shown in Embassy Gallery Edinburgh, has focussed on the fusion of the technological and the human, creating an uncomfortable hybrid through digital and kinetic sculpture.

Give in to that Easy Living expands upon this previous work, attempting to explore these matters in a playfully cynical way, experimentally introducing an object-based installation which highlights our relationship with the bizarre, posthuman form that technology has created. Mobility assistance devices, kinetic sculpture and film create a sad scene of near total technological integration. Technology has become an extension of ourselves, no longer a separate entity; we feel lost or uneasy without it. The expectation of connection to anything and anyone at any time and for it then to be reciprocated immediately is an assumed part of capitalist consumer culture. Not only do we need to be accessible 24/7, we also believe that it is essential to be constantly active as part of our techno-ego. Our technological addiction has melted into everyday life, becoming monotonously accepted as part of normality. Website

Caitlyn Main (UK) – Caitlyn Mains practice operates from a state of uncertainty: through sustained linguistic unravelling and temporal installation, she presents works that speak of intimacy, agitation and balance. She accommodates, and indeed, propagates conditions encouraging fragility: every piece has the potential to collapse in on itself, and contains obvious indications of temporality. The work is a physical manifestation of precariousness – the use of dangling, leaning, bound and suspended elements serves to underline the flimsiness of matter.

Mains compositions reverberate between a situation of familiarity and abstraction. As firm edges become dissolved, or ignored, the parameters of her work seem to become floppy, saggy, and fluid – seeping outward to be absolved into the daily mass of visual information that surrounds us. The flesh of her assemblages is that of the world – the bones and tendons extrapolated from the domestic and the detrital, from our illuminated back lit phone screens and the phrases uttered to one another. Her frantic constellations continually oscillate between contradictory states: they are simultaneously saturated and empty, humorous, pathetic, sexual, exquisite and insignificant. Website

Rodrigo Arteaga (CHILE) – Rodrigo’s work aims to redefine some notions and ideas around nature and culture, considering what sort of division can exist between them. He has used material culture that comes from science and its varied systematic methods in the form of books, maps, diagrams, furniture and tools. There is some inherent contradiction in this effort to bring together order and disorder, the useful and the useless, unearthing the coded enigmas of our relationship to the environment. He has responded to scientific culture in an attempt to embrace its limits, maybe turn it back onto itself, finding a crack, subjectivizing something meant to be objective. Website

Alicia Fidler (UK) – Alicia’s practice expands how aesthetics of an object can be used to allude to the presence of action and a premise for performance. Functionality and Agency are contexts, which she employs to transcend an object’s still state. Adopting motifs such as handles, hooks, hinges, nets, harnesses and hoops, she dips into our preexisting relationships with objects and actions. Using Function as a guide for how the body enters the work. ‘Where the handle meets the hand to produce the thing’.

The work’s interaction is the crux, the genesis. She is fascinated by the anticipation and desire for engagement with sculpture. Changing and twisting the nature of the body and the object, into a moment caught in time. She makes works, which in every sense give instructions and demand usage but are so still. Wrapped up in potentiality. Stalling the moment of activity, producing an object that screams its performative past and future out. Recently working with visual suggestion, she has begun to use photographs of past performances. Distorting them with pattern and abstraction. Absorbing images directly onto materials. Re-digesting the echoes of action, presenting a twisted instruction. Through self-referencing, function and performance my work has become anthropomorphic. The sculptures embody their own Agency through visual clues.

They play out their own situations and actions extending beyond the tools, objects and apparatus they resemble. She moves from the realms of interaction, into works that represent a single moment; Bodilyobjects. Website

Callum Johnstone (UK) Callum Johnstone’s practice explores environmental collapse and the implications it will have on humanity. Knowing that our environment is changing at an accelerated pace due to climate change, humanity must quickly adapt by re-imagining and re-designing the structures in which we live. Johnstone aims to show that it is not the physical structures alone which must change, by also the underlying structures of our society which need to be rethought.

Though his work is primarily understood as sculpture, it often verges on the boundaries of architecture and design. His structures often incorporate repeating modular elements which allow the potential for a continuation, acting simply as a beginning component to a much larger superstructure. These ideas can then extend to the actions of the individual which as a collective become a greater movement and have the potential to alter society as we know it. Johnstone sees himself not only as a commentator and illustrator of current events but also as a module of the superstructure we call society. As a catalyst of ideas, the artist intends to inspire a conversation on ways in which humanity may adapt to imminent environmental threats.

Image Credit: Kathryn Rattray Photography

Sulphur... Close Enough. by Bill Amidon

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Clouded, Orange, or Pink-edged Sulphur? Apparently there's no way to know with certainty as hybridization is so rampant between them that lepidopterologists are unable to distinguish them using molecular phylogenetics studies, so... it's a Sulphur.

Wood Family Fishing Bridge Train Sculpture at Sunset [DSC_1405] by Mark's Postcards from Beloit

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The Chicago & Northwestern Railway constructed this 720-foot long pony plate through-truss bridge in 1928.

It's a bridge, it's art, and it's Beloit's - By William D. Behling

IT CAN BE SAID with certainty that Beloit's newest bridge is a work of art, not to mention a structure inviting community use and enjoyment.

This bridge is made for walking, not for driving across in the family car. There are five other bridges for that sort of traffic. Actually, a new-old bridge, the span whereof we speak is a plank-floored, steel-railed cross-river pathway for bikers and walkers and for fishing and picnicking and for relaxing upon while watching the river's flow and contemplating the meaning of life.

Using a little imagination, one can see the eight big platforms accommodating such activities as art shows, dances and so forth.

At 11 o'clock Saturday morning, the Wood Family Fishing Bridge is to be dedicated. The ceremony, at the east end of the bridge on the RiverWalk, is open to the public. On hand will be city officials, members of the Wood family, the artist who designed the bridge, the contractors who built it, and members of the Beloit 2000 organization, whose RiverFront Project comes nearer to completion with the opening of the bridge.

STEVEN P.J. WOOD, former president of Warner Electric Brake and Clutch, Co., made the fishing bridge project possible. His $600,000 gift covers the cost. No public funds have been used. Wood joins a list of prominent Beloit industrialists and business people whose generosity has resulted in many of the RiverFront Project's amenities.

Wood will present the completed bridge to Beloit 2000 President Charles Hart, who will in turn present the facility to the people of Beloit, represented by City Council President John Murphy.

Let us briefly recount the events to be culminated by Saturday's ceremony.

SOON AFTER A group of business, industrial and civic leaders formed the Beloit 2000 partnership, a University of Wisconsin urban planner, Prof. Phil Lewis, was asked to suggest ways for Beloit to reclaim for public use some unsightly properties along the city's riverfront. Lewis envisioned a RiverWalk, leading from downtown north to Henry Avenue, and following both the east and west banks from the Portland Avenue area northward. He saw the old and unused wooden railroad trestle as a cross-river link for the walkway.

It happens that Alan McIvor, a Beloit College vice president, has a close friend and former McAllister College (St. Paul) classmate, who is an artist of world repute. His specialty is designing bridges that are public artworks that can be used by people. The artist is Iranian-born Siah Armajani. He came to Beloit to visit McIvor and at once pronounced the old trestle eminently suitable for supporting a fishing bridge.

ARMAJANI LIKES TO design things that connect people with their community, and the community's past with its future. The old trestle, built in 1928 and last used by trains in the early 60s, was made to order for the Armajani treatment. The bridge had been an important rail link for Beloit industry, and Beloit's Fairbanks Morse has been a major manufacturer of railroad locomotives. To honor that history, Armajani capped off his bridge design with an aluminum shell replica of an F-M built locomotive perched on a steel framework above the bridge floor.

Beloit 2000 commissioned Armajani to design the bridge back in 1993. The artist's work was supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. But, truth be told, Armajani's friendship with McIvor and his fascination for the bridge project as well as the receptiveness of the community to his public art, resulted in his doing the design work pretty much on a pro bono basis.

With the bridge design on hand, but no funds for the project, Beloit 2000 had to wait for an “angel.” Last year, Steve Wood stepped forward, pledging money for the project, in honor of his family.

ARMAJANI PREFERS TO work with local craftspeople, and he couldn't have found a better bunch than was recruited for the bridge project. He's taken a liking to Tom Gilbank of Gilbank Construction; Kevin Newman, builder of wood landscaping components; Ed Kipp of Elk II manufacturing, metal fabricators, Pete Gustafson of Gustafson Electric, and others who do fencing, excavating and the like.

These “country boy contractors,” all of modest size, have worked together on most RiverFront jobs. They cooperate willingly, help one another when necessary, and quite probably have put more time and effort into the bridge project than they intended, or are being paid for.

Making the bridge part of the RiverWalk system wouldn't have been possible without the wholehearted cooperation of Beloit Box Board Co. President Joe Chamberlain. The west end of the bridge is where Box Board's truck parking and pallet storage yard, not to mention a huge propane tank, had been located. To help the project along, the Beloit Corp. sold Box Board some land for a new truck yard. And Chamberlain agreed to clear the area so that a walkway could be built from the fishing bridge to the Portland Avenue bridge.

“WE COULDN'T HAVE done it without Joe's cooperation,” says Erv Zuehlke, who is the volunteer “clerk of the works,” on the bridge project. And, say the contractors and Chamberlain and Beloit 2000 officials, the job probably couldn't have been done without Zuehlke.

“Erv is an absolute gem,” says Jeff Adams, who has been Beloit 2000 coordinator since Day One. “He's kept the inevitable loose ends tied together. The contractors respect him. They're all friends and they work well together, anyway, but Erv's involvement as a volunteer has been a huge help.”

Gilbank, a Clinton based general contractor, has been a key participant for Beloit 2000 all along, as have Newman and Kipp. Their pride in having had roles in making Beloit's riverfront a real showplace, is obvious.

Kipp and his crew (he says they're a family) have put together 15,703 pieces of metal, I-beams, two-inch railings and small pickets _ with a total of 125,624 individual welds, according to Kipp's calculations. The metalwork on the bridge weighs better than 100 tons. The steel framework is fastened to the railroad ties and stringers of the original trestle, whose 16-inch pilings are sunk deep into the river bottom and will be there a long, long time.

ONTO THE STEEL framework, Newman's woodworkers have placed a network of 2 by 8 stringers. Fastened to the stringers with 56,000 three-inch wood screws are treated white pine planks, giving the bridge and its eight fishing platforms a 13,000 square foot floor. At either end of the 720-foot bridge are steel-frame “gates” that never close, centered over a tree at the east end and a boulder at the west end, in keeping with Armajani's design.

Pete Gustafson and his crew of electricians have had one of the more challenging roles in building Armajani's bridge.

The bridge's lighting system is high-tech stuff _ no bulbs. Teacup-size plastic luminaries mounted on the railings get their light via fiber optic strands from hidden light-source boxes. Revolving discs change the colors to make the bridge more interesting to look at and walk upon at night. The bridge-top locomotive also will be bathed in changing-color light that is conveyed by fiber optic strands from a computer-controlled source.

BESIDES HAVING NO bulbs to burn out, the lighting system consumes a mere 3,500 watts, less than the oven in a kitchen stove.

With the new bridge, Beloit becomes the repository of more and better “public art” than many large cities can claim. And it all started nearly 20 years ago when we were feeling rotten about our town and the private-sector Beloit 2000 group launched the RiverFront project.

tekla by untalkativeRAQS

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A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.

Bret Harte

Cambrai Institute Hall established 1892, formerly known as Rhine Villa Institute, South Australia by Contemplari

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On Monday November 16, the foundation stone of the building to be called the Rhine Villa Institute was laid by Mr Theo Hack MP.

A luncheon was served to the members of Parliament, committee, trustees, and others at 1 o'clock.

In the evening a public meeting was held, which was attended by about 140 persons, when Mr Hack gave ‘An evening with Jerome K. Jerome’.

The building when completed is to serve for school, institute, and chapel.

The residents generally are assisting, and the building is to be opened within three months. A school building particularly is much needed here. This, together with the railway, which is deemed a certainty, will assist the district very much. It should be mentioned that the Hon J Warren MLC, presided at the evening meeting, and that the Attorney-General (the Hon R Homburg) has promised to open the building when completed. [Ref: South Australian Chronicle 28-11-1891]

RHINE VILLA (Murray Flats) February 26

The new Institute was opened here on the 16th inst by the Hon R Homburg, Attorney-General, in the presence of a large number of people. Messrs Hack and Holder MP were also present and delivered addresses.

During the afternoon meeting, Mr J A Payne, on behalf of the Committee of Institute, and the residents of the district, presented Mr Homburg with a very handsome address printed on silk, and framed.

At 5.30 pm a tea took place in the hall.

In the evening a concert was held: an excellent programme consisting of solos, duets, recitations, dialogues and farces, was most efficiently carried out.

The Rev C W Genge, who is leaving for Western Australia after two years residence here, was presented, by Mr C Groth, on behalf of the three churches, Rhine Villa, Pine Hut, and Saunders' Creek, with a handsome testimonial.

After the usual vote of thanks a most enjoyable evening was brought to a close, despite the excessive heat. [Ref: Bunyip 4-3-1892]

A party consisting of the Attorney-General and Mr T Hack, members for Gumeracha, and Mr F W Holder MP, left Adelaide at half-past 6 on Wednesday morning for Rhine Villa in order to take part in the opening of the new institute. The people from the surrounding districts had assembled in the morning and indulged in a picnic.

The institute is a fine building, the principal room being some 20 x 40 ft. and the smaller room 14 x 16. The necessary funds have been subscribed by the inhabitants, the action being a very plucky one considering that the past season is the worst they have ever known.

The debt on the building, of which the foundation stone was laid by Mr Hack in November, is only £200: a very small amount, as it is to be used for a school, for an institute, for public meetings, and for services on Sunday.

The building is plastered throughout and thoroughly finished. Mr Homburg opened the ceremony at a quarter past 3 by taking a position in front of the door and declaring the institute open. He complimented the inhabitants on the energy they had shown and the success with which it had been crowned. All present then entered the building where further speeches were made, the Attorney-General contributing one in English and one in German. Mr Hack and Mr Holder both made very happy speeches.

After tea had been taken a programme of music and recitations was carried out, interspersed with addresses from the visitors, and a pleasant though warm evening was thus spent.

The Parliamentary party set out on the return journey at half-past 5 on Thursday morning and reached Adelaide at 2 o'clock thoroughly baked after their 50-mile drive in the intense heat. [Ref: Express & Telegraph 19-2-1892]

New Rhine Villa Institute Hall [Addition]

The ceremony of laying the foundation stone of the new Rhine Villa Institute Hall was performed by Mr R T Melrose, of Rosebank, Mt Pleasant.

Mr H Mickan senior, President of the Institute Building Committee, in introducing Mr Melrose, made reference to the building of the original institute 21 years ago. Since then the growing population had made it necessary to build a new hall, and he hoped that the people of the district would give the committee all the assistance in their power to make the movement a success. He presented Mr Melrose with a silver trowel in honour of the occasion. [Ref: Kapunda Herald 13-9-1912]

Institute Addition

An unusually large number of towns-people and visitors assembled at the Rhine Villa Institute on Saturday last to witness the laying of the foundation stone of the new hall, which is being added to the present institute. The hall, when finished, will be a great improvement to the town from an architectural point of view, besides affording greater convenience to the public. The building is to be of limestone, 66ft long, 32ft wide and l6ft high.

Mr H Mickan (President), in opening the ceremony … briefly gave the history of the present institute. Nearly 21 years ago, he said, a forward movement was made to erect a public building of some kind.

It was very hard to build in those days, as four families constituted the inhabitants of Rhine Villa, but the work was done and since then the building had served many purposes, including church, school, council chamber, library, and a place for public amusement.

The school fife band enlivened the proceedings.

Mr Arthur Payne moved a vote of thanks to Mr Melrose.

Afternoon tea was supplied by the ladies, and the proceeds therefrom went to the funds of the new hall. [Ref: Mount Barker Courier and Onkaparinga and Gumeracha Advertiser 13-9-1912]

Thursday April 24 was quite a red letter day at Rhine Villa, the occasion being the opening of the new Institute Hall by the Hon John Cowan, MLC. The day was beautifully fine, and a large gathering of spectators assembled to witness the ceremony of opening the building. Mr Cowan complimented the Building Committee on the erection of so fine a building in the district.

During the afternoon a bazaar and sale of gifts by auction were held, and proved satisfactory, as over £157 was taken during the day. This will be a big help in paying off the expenses of the building, which cost £640 to erect. [Ref: Kapunda Herald 9-5-1913]

WR/BR 37674, Bedale by Rabbi WP Thinrod

There were clearly two engines "in steam" on the day we visited but this is the only one we could identify with certainty.

Hands Holding Ideas . . by jef Safi

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Outlining a Theory of General Creativity .. on a 'Pataphysical way

^ Obscura's selfme exposed to my tags-map extracted from flickr inspector memory !

"THE ALLEGORY OF CAMERA & OBSCURA".

Once upon a time there was two small dark boxes, illuminated with certainties, two small empty heads, full of hope, and whose sensitive soul was waiting until the external light penetrates them to dazzle them with an image of the "True Reality”. At the proper time, they finally opened.

Camera in pursuit of the Absolute, wanted all to see without any reflection. All, absolutely All ! Then, at the proper time, it decided to be totally overcome by the "True Entropic Reality", all its sensitivity offered to intensely feel everything, without any prejudice, without thinking one second with all these words which darkens the mind more than they enlighten it. It installed a hypersensitive film which it will push in spite of its coarse grain. It tuned her diaphragm to the maximum aperture, a long time, and gave up itself to ecstatically feel the whole true light of the whole True Entropic Reality.

Obscura in quest of the Universal Knowledge, wanted all to know precisely, it wanted all to understand and memorize with a maximum of details and discernment. Then at the proper time, it decided to focuse a depth of field as deep as possible, to choose a pause time as short as possible, to be sure to get the highest neatness of the True Real Universal Memory. It installed a hyperfine grain film which it will develop energetically to compensate its low sensitivity. It tuned the aperture at less than anything, and adjusted the pause time at an infinitesimal fraction of nothing.

The moral of the story ? All the photographers will say it to you !

Camera obtained the most luminous image which is at ounce the fuzziest one, an immaculate uniform Absolute Entropic white 100%blank.

Obscura obtained the finest image which is at ounce the darkest one, an immaculate uniform Universal black 100%blank.

From now on, when it chooses an aperture and a time of pause suitable to create less blind images, Camera finally formed in it several suspicions of True Reality. They are images as poor of Absolute Sensitivity as weak of Universal Knowledge, but they are marvellous and magic images, illuminated by unexpected shapes and colors.

In the neighbourhood of the Absolute Entropy, each cell of Camera opens like a white sapphire prism dispersing and breaking up the Entropic light in colored iridescences. From her cells juxtaposition are emerging lines and shapes, metamorphosing the dazzling Entropic light in simple but unknowable .. shapes, only lacking some .. words to name them.

From now on, when it chooses an aperture and a time of pause suitable to create less blind images, Obscura finally formed in it several suspicions of True Reality. They are images as poor of Universal Knowledge as weak of Absolute Sensitivity, but they are marvellous and magic images, rich of ambiguous signs and senses.

In the neighbourhood of the Universal Memory, each cell of Obscura opens like a black sapphire crystal dispersing and breaking up the universal darkness in colored enlightening sparks. From her cells juxtapositions are emerging now vowels, consonants and others signs, metamorphosing the gloomy universal darkness in simple but unknowable .. words, only lacking some .. shapes to imagine them.

Refer to The median vacuum semiotics : Idiom nearby Absolute Entropy.

Juvenile Sharp-Shinned Hawk-Thanks Don by Shari Hindman

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As usual I cannot identify this small hawk with absolute certainty. It was about the size of a kestrel. I am showing two different poses in the comments. The side view is pretty badly blurred but it still should give some idea of the feather pattern.

Brett Murray "Bot (Giant)" by Vaughanoblapski!

From: www.everard-read.co.za/exhibition/145/press_release/

WHITE NIGHTS

Written by Lucienne Bestall

In Brett Murray’s Hide, the artist invites a novel hesitancy into his work. Familiar with the uncertain charge of giving offence, Murray now considers the censorship offence inspires. There is little of the polemic tone that previously characterised his work, few brash jokes and damning declarations. Instead, the artist questions his convictions, appears distrustful of his own moral certitude. With the lasting UMMM… of the text work Doubt (2018), Murray approaches his subject with something like apprehension.

“The punitive gesture of censoring finds its origin in the reaction of being offended,” JM Coetzee writes in his essay Taking Offence (1996). “The strength of being-offended, as a state of mind, lies in not doubting itself; its weakness lies in not being able to afford to doubt itself.” Doubt is then the antidote to the certainty that justifies outrage. Though founded on such certitude, the offence is seldom specific, more I-know-it-when-I-see-it, yet no less intolerable for its indeterminacy. Being-offended is a profoundly unpleasant state of mind – it demands an action that it might be made exterior, might guard the psyche against the object of outrage. Censorship alone offers itself as defence. In taking offence – Coetzee again – “we feel any or all of a miscellany of states of unpleasure, including but not limited to disgust, shame, hurt and anxiety; also a measure of resentment against the one on whom this unpleasure is blamed.” That this measure of resentment can have menacing consequences is well known to the artist. In the story of Murray’s The Spear (2012), giving offence sent him not only to the nation’s courts but to the court of public opinion, which was less given to rigour and reason, less concerned with the ideals of free speech. Indeed, the echo chamber of the internet proved no uncertain foe – the accusations levelled against him as numerous as they were nebulous.

Where political satire has long been Murray’s primary preoccupation, in Hide he turns his attention inward. Poking fun at South Africa’s imperfect transition to democracy has proved more tragic than comic a pastime, a dangerous game with few rewards. There are no easy jokes in the nation’s body politic. The artist withdraws to the intimacy of his home, to the comforts of family life. But the political cannot be kept out. It slips in unwelcomed, leaks from the light of cellphone screens, illuminates the nights of our discontent. White nights; insomniac, unsettled. He cannot sleep, nor does he want to – sleep being “a metaphor for moral paralysis and the atrophy of conscience,” as Lloyd Pollack wrote of Murray’s work. The sleep of reason, we are reminded, produces monsters. Murray’s Hide is populated by many such monsters, by things that go bump in the night. Bats, owls, nagapies, even Koko the Clown, all populate the artist’s nocturnal imaginings. Yet by his wakefulness, the artist resists sleep’s metaphoric import. His stimulant of choice? The burden of consciousness.

For all Murray’s material and conceptual eloquence, Hide is a curiously conflicted body of work. It appears caught between two opposing desires – a longing for quiet complexity and a growing outrage against censoriousness; the wish to be silent and the impulse to join the fray. That the personal and political proves to be inseparable lends the exhibition its lasting pathos. Intimate reflections are broken by inflammatory tweets, images of innocence shot through with red dots. The spectre of violence – both real and symbolic – pervades these collected works.

The sculptures in Hide are an unusual offering from an artist given to loud assertions and more agitprop aesthetics. There is to these works a shared sense of fragility, regardless of their stolid forms. In his material shift towards marble, Murray finds a medium more empathetic than metal. It is softer, he suggests, even kinder – more forgiving and poetically pliable – than bronze. Yet here, both find a childlike expression; the sculptures’ rounded forms evocative of storybook characters and plastic toys. Most appear quietly fearful, some sinister. All are formally seductive and materially elegant. Where earlier sculptures, like The Fundamentalists (2015) and Emperor (2015), were distinctly aggressive in tone, the sculptures in Hide are more veiled in their invocations. Their titles speak to a desire for comfort – Solace, Protect and Us (2018) – and a growing uncertainty. Some are supplications for safety, others portents of coming crises. Such is Boiling Frog (2018), carved from black and red marble with polished precision. With its quiet threat and immoveable form, the work reads as warning. The frog, insensible to its predicament, will soon succumb – slowly, ineluctably.

While the sculptures in Hide have about them a shared ambivalence, the many wall pieces read as unambiguous accusations. With such titles as Instagram Revolutionaries, Snowflakes and Facebook Fundamentalists, the works in the Disney Suicide series (2018) respond to social media’s illiberal tendencies. Murray is not alone in his criticisms. Many have opined, with growing concern, the spreading censoriousness in liberal society. Dissent is increasingly discouraged, opposing views punished. Where blinding moral certainty is upheld, nuance and complexity are silenced. Public shaming offers examples of the retribution measured out to those who cross the capricious line; intolerance abounds, perceived transgressions are punished. Nowhere does this play out more clearly than the internet – where online discourse has been largely reduced to symbolic signalling. Armchair activism, however ineffectual, has become the single claim to moral virtue. Murray demurs:

ONE FANON QUOTE – a marble plaque reads – ONE BIKO POSTER AND THE PUBLIC LOVE OF JAZZ DOES NOT A REVOLUTIONARY MAKE.

If free speech is to be upheld, transgressions are to be tolerated. Contested, debated, but above all allowed to stand. “Freedom of expression,” as Salman Rushdie said, “includes the freedom to insult.” And if not to insult, then to dispute, to challenge the status quo. As such, so-called ‘cancel culture’ only highlights the limits of liberalism. It is the misguided response of real grievances, a protest against the apparent lack of accountability in national and private institutions. But to those who query the means, those who defend free speech, the radical right-wing is held up as counter-example of unregulated freedoms. Either thought and word must be policed, the argument stands, or else devolve into toxicity. Murray, however, is sceptical. His Disney Suicide series offers a dark reflection on the evils of censorship metered out by the offended – where censorship becomes less an external act of suppression than a suicidal gesture of self-silencing. That one among them is titled Me (2018), perhaps reveals something of Murray’s new reticence. It is too an acknowledgement of his own outrage in the face of this censorial impulse. Yet the artist remains critical, watches his reactions with cool detachment. FUCK THE TWITTER NOSTRA he carves into marble, the letters coloured with gold leaf. Even in anger, Murray is meticulous.

It is too easy to indulge the state of being-offended rather than question its effects, to articulate what it is that one finds so morally repugnant. This the artist does to cutting effect, subjecting, Coetzee writes, “these insipient feelings to the scrutiny of sceptical rationality.” Yet as to the offence Murray’s past work has given, one finds no clear explanation, only vague assertions and the evasive claims against him. Here the title Hide – as in conceal, as in skin – proves compelling in its contradiction. To be white in South Africa is to be everywhere conspicuous; to be, as Ivor Powell wrote in his essay on the artist, “inescapably morally suspect.” There are few hiding places here. The country’s history has stained white identity an indelible shade of iniquity. And it is this stain – the colour of our inherited failings – which lends Murray’s work the offence it gives. It is not that the criticisms he offers are untrue, that he more often provokes uncomfortable laughter, but that he is the wrong messenger. TOO MUCH WHITE SPACE, a marble plaque reads, evoking past judgements held against him as both accuser and accused. In answer, the artist absents himself from more direct political satire, if only for the time being; resigns himself to few comments on the current dispensation. Instead, he turns inwards and looks upwards, to the unseen clouds of the internet gathering above us.

The night is long, the Twitter feed longer still. Intolerance and hostility glow darkly from bright screens. But something other than outrage now hangs in the air – something more sneaking and subtle, which cares little for the opinions of people. Murray’s bats have found a new significance, have grown ever more ominous. The artist, having withdrawn into his home, now finds himself confined to it. Foreboding pools like shadows in corners. The monsters, multiplying, draw closer. WHERE ARE THE ADULTS? Murray asks, as a child afraid of the dark. Who will turn on the lights?

July 2020